2015-16 IUPLR/UIC Mellon Fellows

Dr. Tatiana Reinoza is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Notre Dame and a past member of the Dartmouth Society of Fellows. She is a recognized specialist within the field of Latinx art.  Her work centers on reproductive technologies, such as printmaking and photography, and how these are deployed to create self representational narratives. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin where she completed a dissertation titled “Latino Print Cultures in the US, 1970-2008” in 2016 with the support of the IUPLR-Mellon Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in the Archives of American Art Journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, as well as edited volumes and exhibition catalogues such as ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now. Her first book, Reclaiming the Americas:  Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory  (2023) was published by the University of Texas Press and was shortlisted for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award (CAA) in 2024. Along with Karen Mary Davalos, she co-edited the University of California Press anthology Self Help Graphics at Fifty (2023) which commemorates the golden anniversary of this East LA arts institution. Her work has been supported by the Terra Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and earned awards from the Association of Print Scholars, the College Art Association, and the Latin American Studies Association.

Dr. Ryan Mann-Hamilton is Associate Professor at Fiorello H. LaGuardia Community College/CUNY and Co-Director of the Center for the Americas at CUNY LaGuardia. He received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center, and holds an undergraduate degree in International Business and a Masters in Environmental Science with a focus on renewable technologies. His doctoral dissertation focused on the processes, effects and community reactions to state driven economic development and land dispossession in Samaná, Dominican Republic. He is an educator, community organizer, photographer, consultant and writer and has taught courses in history, anthropology and ethnic studies and given a variety of workshops and lectures on social and environmental justice, community based activism, the social constructions of race and AfroLatin@ History and Culture in the Americas. He is currently the Director of Public Programs for the Institute for Socio-Ecological Research and a board member and organizer with the Mayaguez Childrens Library.​

Dr. Yvette Martínez-Vu (she/her) is a first-generation chronically ill and neurodivergent Chicana grad school and productivity coach, consultant, author, and speaker. She is the producer and host of the top global-ranked Grad School Femtoring Podcast and founder of Grad School Femtoring, LLC where she supports first-generation BIPOCs as they navigate higher education and beyond. Dra. Yvette is the co-author of the book, Is Grad School For Me?: Demystifying the Application Process for First-Gen BIPOC Students with the University of California Press and co-editor of the bestselling Chicana M(other)work Anthology with the University of Arizona Press. You can connect with her on Instagram (@gradschoolfemtoring) and LinkedIn (@yvettemartinezvu) or go to gradschoolfemtoring.com to learn more.

Dr. Marilu Medrano is Research and Instructional Technology Consultant (RITC) at the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities. She received her PhD in the Department of English at UCLA. Her dissertation was titled “Performance and Mestizaje in 20th/21st Century Literature of the Americas.” Other interests include developing video games with narratives geared towards reimagining the Americas and its untold (lesser known) stories.

Dr. Ana Baez is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Chicago State University. She received her BA from Northwestern University in 2007 and her PhD in Hispanic and Italian Studies from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2017. Her teaching and research interests include twentieth and twenty-first Hispanic Caribbean, Latin American, and Latinx literary, visual and cultural representations as well as literary and critical theory, new materialism, postcolonial theory, and the politics of literature. Her dissertation, “Aesthetic Interruptions: Images, Figures, and Form in Twenty-first Century Hispanic Caribbean Literary and Visual Art,” traces contemporary aesthetic challenges to normative conceptions of community in post-1989 literary and visual art of the Hispanic Caribbean. Ana is currently working on two related projects, which delve into the ethics of writing in Hispanic Caribbean aesthetic production, and Latinx literature.

Dr. Ariel Arnau received his PhD in 2018 from the City University of New York in History. His dissertation, “Suing for Spanish: Puerto Ricans, Bilingual Voting, and Legal Activism in the 1970s” traced a series of cases initiated by Puerto Ricans lawyers and activists in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago which resulted in bilingual elections for all language minorities. He is currently adjuncting at two different universities in Philadelphia.