Advisory Board
Founding CLLAS Director Publishes New Book on Elena Poniatowska
Faculty Publication
Founding Director and member of the CLLAS Executive Board, Lynn Stephen (Anthropology), has published a new book on Mexican intellectual and author, Elena Poniatowska.
From Duke University Press:
From covering the massacre of students at Tlatelolco in 1968 and the 1985 earthquake to the Zapatista rebellion in 1994 and the disappearance of forty-three students in 2014, Elena Poniatowska has been one of the most important chroniclers of Mexican social, cultural, and political life. In Stories That Make History, Lynn Stephen examines Poniatowska’s writing, activism, and political participation, using them as a lens through which to understand critical moments in contemporary Mexican history. In her crónicas—narrative journalism written in a literary style featuring firsthand testimonies—Poniatowska told the stories of Mexico’s most marginalized people. Throughout, Stephen shows how Poniatowska helped shape Mexican politics and forge a multigenerational political community committed to social justice. In so doing, she presents a biographical and intellectual history of one of Mexico’s most cherished writers and a unique history of modern Mexico.
https://www.dukeupress.edu/stories-that-make-history
CLLAS Executive Board Member John Arroyo Named Faculty Fellow
Editor’s Note: This article is reprinted from Around the O / September 23, 2021
Faculty fellows program begins for UO’s Environment Initiative
The Environment Initiative at the University of Oregon has announced a new faculty fellowship program funded by the Office of the Provost and has named its first faculty fellow.
The Environment Initiative Faculty Fellows Program aims to enhance transdisciplinary research and advance the Initiative’s strategic priorities. Faculty fellows will receive a course buyout to complete a project that contributes to the goals of the initiative, which include a just and livable future that addresses the intersections of environmental research and teaching with social and environmental justice.
John Arroyo, assistant professor of engaging diverse communities in the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the College of Design, has been appointed as the inaugural faculty fellow for fall 2021. Arroyo is also the director of the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice, a regional collaboration led by UO.
Arroyo’s research, teaching and work in these roles aligns with the mission of the initiative and exemplifies the initiative’s guiding principles.
“Professor Arroyo is an excellent choice as the inaugural fellow for this fellowship,” said Provost and Senior Vice President Patrick Phillips. “He is an outstanding, inclusive contributor and his work models the innovative, relevant and responsive research that the Environment Initiative was envisioned to support.”
Adrian Parr, dean of the College of Design, also praised Arroyo’s new role.
“John’s work to combat intersectional environmental disparities makes him an excellent choice to represent the College of Design in this role,” Parr said. “By studying ways to restructure marginalized communities’ access to resources, education and representation, John demonstrates his commitment to a holistic approach, which is exactly what the Environment Initiative Faculty Fellows Program seeks to promote, support and celebrate. We hope everyone at the University of Oregon will join us in congratulating John.”
As the Environment Initiative Faculty Fellow, Arroyo will draw on the work of the Just Futures Institute to develop a workshop and resources around transdisciplinary research, best practices and implementation for faculty members interested in developing or furthering their equity-oriented environmental research. Details of this upcoming workshop will be announced soon.
“I am delighted that Professor Arroyo will be serving as our inaugural fellow,” Environment Initiative Executive Director Adell Amos said. “His fellowship project is designed to help all of us consider the nature and structure of our research in light of historically excluded communities. Further, I am thrilled that the Environment Initiative is able to launch this fellowship program and can’t wait to see the difference these fellows can make.”
The Environment Initiative is now accepting applications for a second faculty fellow for spring 2022. All teaching and research faculty are welcome to apply. Those who are interested can learn more about the process on the Environment Initiative website.
—By Anna Glavash Miller, University Communications
RELATED LINKS
New grant will create an institute for racial and climate justice
The University For Oregon: Provost and Faculty Collaborate on Strengths
UO professor’s family history detailed in Common Reading book
The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America Website Launch
| March 11, 2020 | ||
| 3:00 pm | to | 5:00 pm |
Join us for undergraduate research presentations and the launching of the website “The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America.” The event showcases the work of students from the Honors College Colloquium focusing on Latin America’s Jewish diaspora, their customs and languages, led by professor Monique Balbuena.
This event is part of CLLAS’ Two-year Theme, “The Politics of Language in the Americas: Power, Culture, History, and Resistance.”
Refreshments will be served!
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
Policy and Planning Trio Engages Diverse Communities
From Oregon Quarterly, April 3, 2019
In spring 2018, change came to the Bethel neighborhood in Eugene. Royal Elizabeth Park received a new name: Andrea Ortiz Park, after Eugene’s first Latina city councilor. Ortiz served from 2004 to 2012 and died in 2017.
“Naming a public space, like a park, after a Latina really sends a positive message of inclusion and belonging to the Latino community in Eugene,” says Gerardo Sandoval [CLLAS Executive Board member], an associate professor who specializes in community development in the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management (PPPM). “It’s a formal designation that recognizes the positive contributions Latinos are making in Oregon.”
The renaming followed years of outreach to the Latino community by Sandoval, a supporter of the city’s efforts to make parks more inclusive. Through the Latino Civic Participation Project, he led an initiative to involve low-income, marginalized groups in community development, public policy, and planning.
Sandoval will continue his outreach and research efforts with the new Access and Equity Research Group. The group includes José Meléndez, an expert in equitable public engagement and transformative learning who joined PPPM as an assistant professor in 2018; and John Arroyo, an MIT-trained urban planner who will arrive this fall after completing his Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship in Latino Studies at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe.
“One person dealing with diversity issues cannot address all of those,” Meléndez says. “We need multiple people addressing them.”
In addition to Latinos, the group will study underrepresented indigenous, Asian American, and African American communities, and will examine the links between communities and the design, planning, and management of public space. In particular, the group will focus on “participatory action research,” which emphasizes partnering with communities to solve problems.
“Many of us use qualitative methods that help elucidate stories and deeper context of the communities we research such as ethnography, in-depth interviews, oral histories, and content analysis of archival and current policy and legal documents,” Arroyo says.
Like Sandoval, Meléndez and Arroyo have worked with Latino communities. During his doctoral studies and then as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Meléndez investigated the budgeting process in the city’s 49th Ward, finding that Spanish-speaking Latino immigrants struggled to participate due to a language barrier. He partnered with the community to create a Spanish language committee that significantly increased and sustained the participation of its members in civic decision-making.
As a fellow, Arroyo is studying Latino immigrants with his first book project, Shadow Suburbanism: Mexican Everyday Life, Fear, and Space in Greater Atlanta. He is analyzing how Mexican immigrants reshape their suburban environments despite rising anti-immigration policies that distress one of the South’s fastest growing populations.
Meléndez and Arroyo will also continue their research and outreach to Latino communities in Oregon, where that population is growing rapidly. According to the Latino Civic Participation Project, Latinos now make up 14 percent of the state population and 20 percent of the K–12 population.
Says Arroyo: “People don’t realize Oregon is a microcosm of national issues—rural poverty, urban income disparities, influxes of migration, and indigenous and small-city planning and infrastructure.”
—By Alex Cipolle, MA ‘11 (journalism), College of Design
. . 
. . 