Paul Joseph López Oro is the CSRC’s Institute of American Cultures visiting scholar for 2022-23. López Oro is a transdisciplinary Black studies scholar whose teaching and research closely examines Black Latin American and U.S. Black Latinx social movements, hemispheric mobilizations and migrations, and Black feminist queer theories and ethnographies. During his year in residency he will be working on his book manuscript, tentatively titled “Indigenous Blackness in the Américas: The Queer Politics of Self-Making Garifuna New York.” The study is a critical ethnography of how gender and sexuality shape the ways in which transgenerational Garifuna New Yorkers of Central American descent negotiate, perform, and articulate their multiple subjectivities as Black/Indigenous/Central American Caribbeans. He is an associate professor in the department of sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York.
Stacy I. Macias is an associate professor in the department of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at California State University, Long Beach. Before earning a Ph.D. in Gender Studies from UCLA, she co-founded Tongues, a queer, lesbian, and bisexual women of color project and zine and created the lesbian and bisexual women’s program, L.U.N.A (Latinas Understanding the Need for Action) at Bienestar. Her research and teaching interests are in feminist of color knowledge production; feminist transnational activisms; and Chicana feminist cultural politics including queer of color femininities, butch-femme desire, and lesbian of color counter-publics. Her recently published works include, “Somos contra la ‘queer-ificacíon’”/ “We reject the queer-ification of lesbianism”: lesbian political identity and anti-queer politics among Mexican lesbians and queer Chicanas-Latinas,” in the Journal of Lesbian Studies; “A Gay Bar, Some Familia, and Latina Butch-Femme: Rounding out the Eastside Circle at El Monte’s Sugar Shack” in the edited collection, East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, and “Latina and Chicana Butch/Femme in Literature and Culture” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. She is co-editor with Liliana Gonzalez of the Journal of Lesbian Studies forthcoming special issue, “Chicana Lesbians: Re-Engaging the Iconic Text ‘The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About.’ Through UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, she is working with The Latina Futures, 2050 Lab to draw attention to the critical contributions of self-identified U.S. Latina lesbian women, including how they catalyzed social change that would positively impact future generations of Latinas, LGBTQ communities, and the overall social, cultural, and political conditions of Latina/o/x/s in the U.S.
Daniel Millán is a 2022-23 UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of American Cultures and the CSRC. Daniel earned a PhD in sociology with an emphasis in Chicana/o Latina/o Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He has researched immigrant families and the experiences of undocumented young adults. His current research explores the consequences of a prolonged lack of inclusive immigration policy for members of Latina/o mixed-status immigrant families.
Brenda Selena Lara is a doctoral candidate in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and a CSRC IUPLR/UIC-Mellon Dissertation Fellow for 2022-23. Born and raised in Huntington Park, California, she is a first-generation student whose strong, hardworking Mexican mother taught her feminist values. Lara’s upbringing influences her historical and theoretical research, which analyzes LGBTQ+ Latinxs’s lives, knowledge, deaths, and cultural depictions. Her dissertation, “Epistemic Haunting: Queer Latinx Ghosts in Academia,” theorizesepistemic haunting as a framework for understanding queer Latinx scholars’ knowledge and the social violence they face.Lara has been awarded the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship, the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies Fellowship, and a UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship. She is a UCLA First-Generation Graduate Student Councilmember and the editor of Queer Cats: A Journal of LGBTQ Studies.
Arón Montenegro is a doctoral candidate in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and a CSRC 2022-23 IUPLR-Mellon Dissertation Fellow. His dissertation project, “Entre Flor y Fusil: Central American Arts Production and a Collective Memory of Resistance,” focuses on the role of art in sustaining a collective memory of the Central American diaspora in the United States. An oral history project that incorporates archival research and critical social theory, the dissertation highlights the legacy of international solidarity efforts supporting Central American social movements and migrant communities. Montenegro is also the arts coordinator for Homies Unidos, a violence prevention program that works with recently arrived immigrants in the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles.
Valeria González holds a BS in psychology from the University of Chile in Santiago, Chile, and a PhD in basic psychology from the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal. She is a member of the executive board of the UCLA Postdoctoral Association and a founding member of FEAST (Fostering Equity and Accountability in STEM Together), a group of UCLA postdoctoral scholars and graduate students that promotes and advocates for diversity and inclusion in STEM fields. González’s research focus is understanding the behavior and neurobiological basis of decision-making and animal cognition. As a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, her work will concentrate on understanding the role of the frontal cortex in information value. During her fellowship, González will be mentored by Alicia Izquierdo, professor in the Department of Psychology.
Javier Quezada holds a PhD in environmental science from the Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (IPICYT) in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. He taught as an adjunct instructor at the Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila before receiving a UC MEXUS-CONACYT fellowship in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. His research interests are adsorption and electrochemical processes for environmental remediation and electrochemical approaches to clean energies. As a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Quezada will be mentored by Eric Hoek, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Sylvanna Vargas holds a BA from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and an MPH and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Southern California. She completed her predoctoral psychology internship at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center. Her research focuses on reducing depression and suicide disparities, with an emphasis on sexual minority youth of color, and intersectional risk and resilience factors, including culturally responsive interventions for depression and suicide. Vargas is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (2017), the American Psychological Foundation’s Ruth G. and Joseph D. Matarazzo Scholarship (2017), a National Institute of Mental Health Institutional Training Grant (T32)(2021), and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2021). As a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Vargas will be mentored by Anna Lau, professor in the Department of Psychology.
Julio Vega-Payne earned his PhD in classics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, he will research representations of the natural world in Homeric poetry and how ancient models of the relationship between humans and the environment can be placed in a productive dialogue with modern ways of thinking about the current environmental crisis. Vega-Payne will be mentored by Alex Purves, professor in the Department of Classics.
Claudia Zapata earned their PhD in the Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture Program in Art History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Their dissertation is titled “Chicano Art Is Not Dead: The Politics of Curating Chicano Art in Major U.S. Exhibitions, 2008–2012.” They received their BA and MA in art history from the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Maya art from the Classic period (250-900 CE). Their research interests include curatorial methodologies of identity-based exhibitions, Chicanx and Latinx art, digital humanities, BIPOC zines, and designer toys. Zapata has curated several exhibitions for Texas institutions and is currently a curatorial assistant of Latinx art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. As a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Zapata will be mentored by Charlene Villasenor Black, professor in the Departments of Art History and Chicana/o and Central American Studies.