2018-19 IUPLR/UIC Mellon Fellows

Dr. Deanna Ledezma (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate and the UIC Mellon Program Coordinator (2022-24) at the University of Illinois Chicago. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History at UIC in May 2022 with her dissertation “The Fecundity of Family Photography: Histories, Identities, Archival Relations.” In addition to the IUPLR/UIC Mellon Fellowship, she has received the Santa Fe Art Institute Truth and Reconciliation Thematic Residency, the Edman-Waltz Fellowship, the Access to Excellence Fellowship, the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Fellowship, and the Chancellor’s Graduate Research Award. Her essays have been published in Art Journal and Photography & Culture and by Walls Divide Press and Green Lantern Press. She wrote the foreword to Diana Solís’s artist’s book Luz: Seeing the Space Between Us (2022) and co-curated the exhibition Contigo, Diana Solís (Co-Prosperity, Chicago, August 5–September 23, 2023) with Nicole Marroquin. Forthcoming publications include “Photographs from the Fields: The Digital Activism of the United Farm Workers” in Re:Working Labor (Fall 2023) and “Dismantling Latinx Monoliths: Representations of Material Culture, Communities, and Kinship in 1980s Chicago” in The Routledge Handbook of American Material Culture Studies (2024). She is currently working on her book manuscript Making Latinx Lineages: Photography, Kinship, and Unsettled Archives. She has taught undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on Latinx art and visual culture, Latin American art, identities in modern and contemporary art, the history and theory of photography, and Latinx literature and life writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Website: www.deannaledezma.com.

Dr. Rocío R. García is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University since August 2019. García earned her doctorate degree in sociology from the University of California Los Angeles. She defended her dissertation, “Latinx Feminist Thought,” in May 2019. Her research interests focus on intersectionality, social movements, critical social theory, and reproductive justice. Her book manuscript, Latinx Feminist Thought: On Difference, Messiness, and Politicmaking (under contract with Routledge Press), focuses on the tensions and contributions of an array of Latinx feminist scholarship along with ethnographic data on Latinx feminist praxis in the movement for reproductive justice. Her articles have been published in journals including Sociological Perspectives, Mobilization: An International Quarterly, Sociology Compass, and Societies. In addition to IUPLR, García’s work has received generous support form the American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship Program and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women.

Dr. Angélica Becerra is a Mexican queer immigrant artist, podcast producer & scholar of political graphics. She received her Ph.D. in Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA . Her dissertation titled “Envisioning a Chicana Radical Digital Aesthetic: Artivism in the Twenty-first Century” was completed in Spring of 2021. She has been an ACLS/Mellon Postdoctoral fellow in Digital Technology and Culture at Washington State University since Fall 2021. Her scholarship focuses on twenty-first-century digital arts. Her artwork is primarily portraiture, with a focus on Black Indigenous and women of color activists. Her art has been featured in VICE and the LA Design Festival and exhibited at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and Self-Help Graphics in Los Angeles.

Dr. Carmela Muzio Dormani is a Bronx-based sociologist, dancer, and creative producer. She completed her PhD at CUNY Graduate  Center in May 2020 and is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences at Mercy College, where she teaches courses on race, class, gender, and culture. Her research centers on everyday cultural practices in multiethnic/multiracial communities, with a particular focus on New York City history, movements for social change, and grassroots dance practices. Her research project, “The Life and Death of Mambo: Culture and Consumption in New York’s Salsa Scene,” explores the tensions between community-building and racialized commodification in the “on2” salsa dance world. The project looks at the changing ways in which people practice, produce, and consume culture in cities. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Popular Culture and Latino Studies and been supported by IUPLR and CUNY’s Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC). Carmela produces a podcast about building creative and economic lifelines outside of academia called The Millennial PhD: Creative Survival at Work and Beyond and serves as a freelance consultant on various writing, content creation, and digital media projects.

Dr. Alex La Rotta is an Assistant Professor at Houston Community College. Formerly, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Department of History and Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race where he teaches U.S. Latinx History and Black/Brown History of Rock & Roll. An avid record collector and DJ, his scholarship focuses on race and popular music in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. His manuscript in preparation investigates sonic affinities and cultural kinships across African-American and Mexican-American communities in twentieth-century San Antonio, Texas. With the support from the Inter-University Program for Latino Research/Mellon Fellowship, he received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Houston in Summer 2019.

Dr. Felix Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at Illinois State University, where he began teaching in January 2023. Before that, Felix was a Lecturer at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, an Adjunct Professor at Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Ureña (UNPHU), and Art Education Supervisor for the Department of Education of the Dominican Republic. He holds a Ph.D. in Art Education with a minor in Latin American Studies from the Pennsylvania State University. With CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (DSI) support, Felix was granted the 2018-2019 IUPLR/UIC Mellon Fellowship. His doctoral research, “Mapping Contested Identities in Dominican Art Education: A Critical History,” has also been recognized by the Penn State Alumni Association, the Penn State Humanities Institutes, and CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. An essay from his dissertation received the 2020 Dominican National Archive Essay Award, one of the highest distinctions for historical research in the Dominican Republic. His dissertation has also provided the groundwork for a published a peer-reviewed article, two book chapters, and numerous conference presentations. Felix was granted the 2024 Illinois State University Research Grant, which will support archival and oral history research on Rafael Diaz Niese’s (1897-1950) impact on Dominican Art. Felix is interested in pedagogical initiatives addressing migration, border-crossing, negated blackness, racism, and gender exclusion, mainly focusing on the Caribbean experience.

Dr. Sharina Maillo Pozo (Felix Rodriguez), SUNY, Department of Languages, Literatures & Culture
Dr. Jennifer Jones (Rocío García), University of Illinois Chicago, Department of Sociology
Dr. Rachel Gonzalez (Deanna Ledezma), University of Austin Texas, Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies
Dr. Petra R Rivera-Rideau (Alex La Rotta), Wellesley College, American Studies
Dr. Sydney Jane Hutchinson (Carmela Dormani), Syracuse University, Music History & Cultures
Dr. Kency Cornejo (Angelica Becerra), University of New Mexico, Department of Art & Art History