Julie Williams Receives Inaugural ALS-Arms Dissertation Research Assistantship

Julie Williams, PhD candidate in American Literary Studies, has garnered the inaugural ALS Elizabeth and George Arms Fund for American Literature Research Assistantship for Dissertation Completion to assist and facilitate the research and writing of her dissertation, “Embodying the West: A Literary and Cultural History of Environment, Body, and Belief.”

Focusing on embodiment in women’s writing in the American West from the 1880s to the present, the dissertation argues that texts, authors, and cultural events depicting bodies that do not fit into the narrative identity created by discourses about the West—bodies that are all “marked” through an alternative mode of gender construction, sexual desire, illness, disability, or race—reveal the limits and possibilities of the mythic West and the discourses of rejuvenation which have shaped it. Dr. Jesse Alemán chairs the dissertation.

The assistantship pays $16,500.00 from the Arms Endowment Fund over one academic year to support dissertation research, and UNM’s Graduate Studies provide dissertation hour tuition remission and heath care coverage for the recipient.

The Elizabeth and George Arms Fund for American Literature is an endowed graduate award fund with the UNM Foundation in recognition of research in American Literature within the College of Arts and Sciences Department of English.