Carlos Aguirre, Laura Pulido, and Sarah Wald among the 2019 recipients of UO’s Fund for Faculty Excellence awards

Editor’s Note: During winter and spring terms 2019, Professor Carlos Aguirre served as interim director of CLLAS. We are delighted that he is among those who were awarded a 2019-20 Fund for Faculty Excellence Award. We also would like to congratulate CLLAS affiliated faculty Laura Pulido and Sarah Wald, and other UO colleagues receiving the award.

From Around the O: 2019 Fund for Faculty Excellence award recipients announced

Fifteen UO faculty members have been selected for the prestigious Fund for Faculty Excellence awards.

The Fund for Faculty Excellence was established in 2006 with the generous support of Lorry I. Lokey and increases the university’s ability to highlight and encourage world-class research and teaching. Since 2006, more than 160 faculty members have received the awards, recognizing their excellence in creative accomplishment, education, research and scholarships.

“I am thrilled to celebrate our excellent faculty,” said Provost and Senior Vice President Jayanth Banavar. “Their scholarly and research efforts have great impact, and they inspire our students and all of us.”

Candidates are nominated by deans, with suggestions from faculty members and unit heads, and nominations are reviewed by the Fund for Faculty Excellence awards committee before a final determination is made by the provost. The award provides faculty members with a $20,000 salary supplement or $30,000 for research support.

Recipients of the Fund for Faculty Excellence awards for 2019-20 are:

• Carlos Aguirre, professor, history
• Wonhee Arndt, associate professor, product design
• Sonja Boos, associate professor, German and Scandinavian
• Erik Girvan, associate professor, law
• Volya Kapatsinski, associate professor, linguistics
• Brice Kuhl, associate professor, psychology
• Stephanie Majewski, associate professor, physics
• Brad Nolen, associate professor, chemistry and biochemistry
• Alexander Polishchuk, professor, mathematics
• Laura Pulido, professor, ethnic studies
• Eleonora Redaelli, associate professor, school of planning, public policy and management
• Dave Sutherland, associate professor, Earth sciences
• Nelson Ting, associate professor, anthropology
• Elizabeth “Liz” Tippett, associate professor, law
• Sarah Wald, associate professor, English and environmental studies

CLLAS 2019 Tinker & Research Grant Awardees

2019-2020 CLLAS Research Support

CLLAS recently announced the recipients of its 2019-20 Graduate Student Research Awards, Tinker Grants, Faculty Collaboration Grant, and Latinx Studies Seed Grant. They are as follows:

Graduate Student Research Grants

• “Inner Exile in Formation and Sustenance of Racial, Sexual, and Gendered Communities in Chile and Argentina.” Jon Jaramillo, Romance Languages.
• “The Politics of Seeking Shelter: Gender-Based Violence and the Right to Safety Among Low-Income Women in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.” Emily Masucci, Anthropology.
• “Complicating Vulnerability: Gendered Disaster Narratives, Ice Loss, & Resilience in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca.” Holly Moulton, Environmental Studies.

Faculty Collaboration Research Grant

• “Oregon’s Water Future: Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, and Community Resilience.” Alai Reyes-Santos, Ethnic Studies, in collaboration with Oregon Environmental Council (OEC).

Second Year Latinx  Studies Seed Grant

• “Decolonial Environmentalisms: Race, Genre, and Latinx Literature.”David Vazquez, English.

Third Year Tinker Foundation Grants

Tinker Field Research Grants are open to students across all academic disciplines and graduate degree programs to assist master’s and doctoral students with travel and field-related expenses for brief periods of field research in Latin America. Administered by CLLAS, the program is funded by the Tinker Foundation, with matching funds from CLLAS, the UO Office of Academic Affairs, and the Graduate School.

• “Recalling Runaways: Studies of Slavery and Absenteeism in Cuba.” Aziza Baker, History. 
• “Nepantleres: LGBTQ+ Migrants’ Transborder Experiences.” Polet Campos-Melchor, Anthropology.
• “Transmission of Traditional Botanical Knowledge Among the Shuar of Amazonian Ecuador.” Sara Khatib, Anthropology.
• “A Case Study of Two Guatemalan Organizations Demanding Justice for the 41 girls.” Carla Osorio Veliz, Geography. 
• “Small-Scale Farmers’ Vulnerability to Climatic Changes in the Chinantec Region, Mexico.” Adriana Uscanga Castillo, Geography. 
• “Electoral Revolutions: A Comparative Study of Rapid Changes in Electoral Participation.” Alberto Lioy, Political Science.   
  

Tags: CLLAS Faculty Grant, CLLAS Graduate Grant funding, Tinker Field Grants

National Park Service unit honors Stephanie Wood

April 29, 2019— Stephanie Wood, research associate in the College of Education and studio instructor for the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, received the Outstanding Partner Award from a unit of the National Park Service called the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. Wood is the University of Oregon’s principal investigator in the project Honoring Tribal Legacies, which aims to include indigenous perspectives in the classroom.

Stephanie Wood is a long-time CLLAS faculty affiliate.

Tags: National Park Service, Stephanie Wood, UO

Ana Lara receives a 2019 Oregon Literary Fellowship in fiction

Recipients of the 2019 Oregon Literary Fellowship include UO assistant professor Ana-Maurine Lara, a CLLAS affiliated faculty member, in the category of fiction. Oregon Literary Arts said their out-of-state judges spent several months evaluating the 400+ applications they received, and selected thirteen writers and two publishers to receive grants of $3,500 each.

Bio
Ana-Maurine Lara, Ph.D., is a national award-winning poet and fiction writer. She is author of the fictional works Erzulie’s Skirt (RedBone Press, 2006), When the Sun Once Again Sang to the People (KRK Ediciones, 2011), and Watermarks and Tree Rings (Tanama Press) and the poetry book Kohnjehr Woman (RedBone Press, 2017). The first of her decade-long projects, Cantos, was released as a limited edition letterpress collection in Fall 2015. Lara is an assistant professor at the University of Oregon.

Tags: Ana-Maurine Lara, Oregon Literary Fellowship, UO

NALAC awards artist grant to Ernesto Martínez

February 20, 2019—Ernesto Javier Martínez has been awarded a $5,000 NFA Artist Grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC). An associate professor in the UO Department of Ethnic Studies, Martínez is one of 43 grantees from among 400 applicants to be selected for the 13th cycle of the NALAC Fund for the Arts grant program.

According to the grant program manager, “These 43 recipients are recognized for their artistic excellence in pursuit of social justice through the arts and were selected from a pool of over 400 applications by a national peer panel process involving 45 arts experts representing diverse disciplines, regions and ethnicities.”

Martínez received the grant “to support the continuation of the Femeniños project, a children’s book and short film series highlighting the experiences of queer Latino/x boys and the families who bear witness to their lives.

This project began in 2017 as a collaboration with the San Francisco-based children’s book author Maya Christina González and has expanded to work with the Los Angeles-based independent film director Adelina Anthony and Oregon-based Hollywood film director Omar Naim. Through the Femeniños project, the artist aims to empower queer Latinx youth through stories that capture their imaginations, embody their cultural roots and represent queer lives in a positive light.”

CLLAS is one of several UO units that have provided grant support to Professor Martínez for his work on this project. In 2018, Martínez published the children’s book When We Love Someone We Sing to Them,which reframes a cultural tradition to include LGBTQ experience. La Serenata is a film adaption of the book. 

“Both the screenplay and the book,” Martínez said, “tell the story of a Mexican-American boy who learns from his parents about serenatas and why demonstrating romantic affection proudly, publicly, and through song is such a treasured Mexican tradition. One day, the boy asks his parents if there is a song for a boy who loves a boy. The parents, surprised by the question and unsure of how to answer, must decide how to honor their son and how to reimagine a beloved tradition.”

Tags: Ernesto Martinez, NALAC artist grant, UO

SOMD grad brings home a Grammy for Latin jazz album

From Around the O: https://around.uoregon.edu/content/somd-grad-brings-home-grammy-latin-jazz-album

February 18, 2019—Musician, educator and composer Josh Deutsch, a 2009 graduate of the UO’s School of Music and Dance, took home a Grammy Award last week for his work on an acclaimed jazz album.

Deutsch played trumpet with the Dafnis Prieto Big Band, which won the best Latin jazz album award for “Back to the Sunset.”

Deutsch earned a master’s degree in jazz studies from the UO and returns to Eugene each summer to teach a jazz improvisation camp at the music school. He received an excellence in teaching award from the UO in 2008 for his work with large and small jazz ensembles and private improvisation students.

Deutsch said playing and recording with Prieto’s Latin jazz band was “a total thrill.”

“The band is full of incredible musicians, some of whom are long time heroes who I’ve been listening to since I was in high school,” he said. “Being part of a Grammy-winning album feels unbelievable. I’ve been fortunate to play with many great musical projects, both as a leader and sideman in New York over the last 10 years, but to have this album receive this level of international acclaim is really exciting and hopefully will lead to more albums and touring with this band.”

In addition to his work with the Dafnis Prieto Big Band, Deutsch leads the band Pannonia and the Josh Deutsch Quintet, and is a founding member of the Queens Jazz Overground. He also performs in a duo with guitarist Nico Soffiato that has toured extensively in Italy and the United States.

Deutsch also a composer. His compositions and arrangements have been performed by artists including the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Oregon Jazz Ensemble, Ron Miles, Danilo Perez and Ruth Marshall.

A native of Seattle, he lives in the borough of Queens in New York City.

Tags: Grammy, Josh Deutsch, Latin Jazz, UO