Marcel Tchatchou (PhD candidate, French) will use the fellowship in the fall to work on his dissertation The Black Body and the Market System. Tchatchou's project analyzes how the history of colonialism and the slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean remain embedded in both the global economy and in the relations between former colonizers and colonized of these regions despite the move towards new market principles, like globalization and neoliberalism, the emergence of new market big players like China, and the role played by large multi-national donor institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Valerie Kaussen is Marcel's dissertation chair.

Milena Rondon (PhD candidate, Spanish) will take the fellowship in the spring to work on her project on the narrative strategies used by three contemporary Latin American women writers--Celia del Palacio, Laura Restrepo, y Selva Almada--to address the topic of feminicide and violence against women. In their literary works Las mujeres de la tormenta (2012), Los divinos (2017), y Chicas Muertas (2010), respectively, these authors denounce feminicide as a devastating social phenomenon marked by machismo, structural discrimination and the intertwined economic interests of political parties and drug cartels. Milena is advised by Guadalupe Perez-Anzaldo.