2017 Bilinski Foundation Fellowship Recipients
Jim Bodington
Jim Bodington is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy and a graduate certificate student in the Women Studies Program. Jim’s dissertation develops an ethics for the understanding of depression which draws on resources in contemporary philosophical and psychological research, existential phenomenology, and poststructuralist feminist theory. He argues that a robust and careful account of depression requires attention to the lived experience of the depressed person as well as an understanding that such an account always proceeds from a testimony forged in a clinical setting and under a diagnostic label which are attended by formative and causally efficacious power relations.
Bryn Campbell
Bryn Campbell is a PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her dissertation centers on the representation of Afro-Hispanic identity and the constitution of black subjectivities through the writing of autobiographies. Of particular interest is how Afro-Caribbean writers reproduce, negotiate or challenge dominant ideologies about national identity and modernity. The research also examines the discursive strategies of Black authors and how these strategies contest the objectification of the Black subject. Given the limited number of autobiographies written by Black writers in Hispanic America and the Caribbean, and given that the scholarship on race in Latin America is also limited, a main objective of the dissertation is to elucidate the contexts, circumstances, and conditions under which the Black writers selected for this project articulate discourses about race, nationality, and modernization.
Alexandro Jara
Alexandro Jara is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of New Mexico. His research interests include U.S. Western History, Latino History, Urban History, and Transnational Studies. Before attending UNM, Alexandro received his B.A. degree from Santa Clara University in Latin American History while also attaining an Urban Education minor that he utilized in his work as an elementary and middle school teacher. Alexandro hopes his research on Latinos in San Jose, CA will help shed light on the significant role this demographic has played in building U.S. urban communities, especially during the postwar period.
Justin Larsen
Justin Larsen is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English, where he studies the material culture depicted in Old English poetry. His dissertation centers on the Exeter Book, a more than 950 year old collection of poetry of numerous genres and surprising contradictions. Additionally, his research interests include the use of digital technologies, especially 3D modeling and printing, in the teaching and study of the history and literature of the Middle Ages, as well as the use of the Middle Ages as an idea in the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. During his career at UNM, Justin has served as a Teaching and Graduate Assistant in the English Department, as the Graduate Assistant and Board Member for the Feminist Research Institute, and as the President of the Medieval Studies Student Association. He has also worked closely with the Institute for Medieval Studies and the UNM chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society.
Abigail G. Robertson
Abigail G. Robertson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English. Her dissertation investigates the life of the legendary Saint Swithun of Winchester who served as bishop in life and source for miracles in death. Synthesizing the disciplines of art history, history, architecture, and literature to illustrate the emergence of the cult that surfaced after Swithun’s death, Abigail’s research details how the remains of the saint influenced the architecture of the cathedral into which his body was ultimately relocated, the religious writing that inspired pilgrims to visit his shrine, and the art objects that sought to represent his holiness in a way that would symbolize with gems and gold the power of his remains.
Andrés Sabogal
Andrés Sabogal is a PhD candidate in the department of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico. His dissertation aims to advance our understanding of the functional properties of Wayuunaiki grammar; a language spoken in the Colombian and Venezuelan Guajira. By exploring the usage of Wayuunaiki clauses in informal conversation and written narrative, Andrés seeks to present a fined-grained description of the meanings and functions of the numerous clause types available in the language, as well as to address the pedagogical implications that the findings bear on current efforts towards increasing bilingualism and biliteracy in the Peninsula.
Morgan Sims
Morgan Sims is a Rhetoric and Composition student in the English department at UNM. Morgan studies the ways in which multimodal composition (writing coupled with other modes of communication such as images, sound recordings, and animations) is being incorporated into first-year writing classes at the university. Her dissertation is an investigation into how a student's prior access to digital technology affects their ability to acquire the 21st century literacy practices promoted by new media.
