Leigh Johnson: Amerian Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship

Leigh Johnson, a doctoral candidate in American Literary Studies, has received the 2010-2011 American Association of University Women’s $20,000 dissertation fellowship for her dissertation, “Domestic Violence and Empire: Legacies of Conquest in Mexican American Writing.” The AAUW supports and advances educational opportunities for women, and its competitive dissertation fellowship is part of the AAUW’s mission to “recognize outstanding women around the globe” and fund “pioneering research” related to women. The award is based on scholarly excellence, teaching experience, and active commitment to helping women through service in their communities, professions, or fields of research.

Leigh’s dissertation project, which is directed by Dr. Jesse Alemán, spans the nineteenth-century to the present and examines how Mexican American writers represent and critique domestic violence as it occurs 
in the home but also as a form of colonial violence that implicates Mexican and US forms of patriarchy in the treatment of women. Her project examines writers such as María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Maria Cristina Mena, Sandra Cisneros, and Demetria Martínez, to name a few, and portions of it have already been published in peer-reviewed journals. Leigh’s work corresponds with her commitment to combine her interests in literary studies, women’s studies, and Chicano/a studies in the classroom and in her scholarship.

Professors Tey Diana Rebolledo (UNM—Spanish), Barbara Reyes (UNM—History), and Sonia Saldívar-Hull (UT-San Antonio—English) also serve on Leigh’s dissertation committee, and Leigh plans to use the one-year tenure of the AAUW fellowship to complete and defend her dissertation in Spring 2011.