The Department of Latina/Latino Studies is proud to announce that Professor Elizabeth Velásquez Estrada has been appointed as a National Humanities Center Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Chosen from 492 applicants, Professor Velásquez Estrada is part of the cohort of the 47th class of 31 fellows selected this year. The National Humanities Center will award approximately $1,500,000 in fellowship grants to enable the selected scholars to take leave from their normal academic duties and pursue research at the Center.
During the fellowship, Professor Velásquez Estrada will have the opportunity to share ideas in seminars, lectures, and conferences at the Center and work on her book project “Intersectional Justice Denied: Warring Masculinity, Violence, and Peacemaking in Post-Accords El Salvador.” Her book draws on two and a half years of ethnographic research in El Salvador and examines the central paradox of Salvadoran male gang members who are simultaneously purveyors of violence and peacemakers. She traces how women relatives of male gang members engage in a complex politics of solidarity with their relatives’ peacemaking efforts and explores the layered politics of women’s demands for intersectional justice.
The National Humanities Center is the world’s only independent institute dedicated exclusively to advanced study in all areas of the humanities. Through its residential fellowship program, the Center provides scholars with the resources necessary to generate new knowledge and to further understanding of all forms of cultural expression, social interaction, and human thought. Through its education programs, the Center strengthens teaching on the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels. Through public engagement intimately linked to its scholarly and educational programs, the Center promotes understanding of the humanities and advocates for their foundational role in a democratic society.