Kubasek Named the 2012-2013 CRS Hector Torres Fellow

Natalie Kubasek, a PhD candidate in English, with a concentration in American Literary Studies, has received the Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship.

Ms. Kubasek joined the English doctoral program in Fall 2010 after earning her MA in English from Simmons College, in Boston, MA, and her BA in English from Whittier College, in her hometown of Whittier, CA. In 2011-2012, she garnered a Latino/a Graduate and Professional Student Fellowship sponsored by UNM’s El Centro de la Raza and the Title V Resource Center.

Her research focuses on Chicano/a literature, and as a CRS Hector Torres fellow, she plans to conduct research for her dissertation on Chicana feminism and cultural production, with an emphasis on theater and performance art. The study of Chicana theater and performance art, Kubasek maintains, is a rich yet untapped area of Chicana cultural production, and the fellowship will help her locate and access primary documents and resources housed in archives across the southwest; she also plans to locate and interview authors, performers, and playwrights significant to the development of Chicana theater.

The Hector Torres Fellowship, a $10,000-$15,000 stipend, was inaugurated by the University of New Mexico’s Center for Regional Studies in memory of the English Department’s slain colleague, Dr. Hector Torres.

The Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship supports graduate research and scholarship in the English Department directly related to Dr. Hector Torres’ fields, as well as the mission of the Center for Regional Studies. Areas include Chicano/a literary and cultural studies; theory (i.e. Marxism, post-structuralism; deconstruction, psychoanalysis; and globalization); film studies; and scholarship related to the mission of the CRS, including history, archival research, literature and other interdisciplinary fields related to New Mexico, the US-Mexico borderlands, and the greater Southwest.