This profile originally appeared on Research Matters.
Although Tania Aparicio and Guadalupe Chavez were both New School for Social Research (NSSR) students, their paths just never crossed. That's not too surprising: Aparicio’s doctoral studies in sociology and many student jobs kept her pretty busy, while Chavez just finished her master’s degree in politics.
What finally brought these emerging scholars together? A profound interest in Mexico and one of the most prestigious scholarships in the world. As NSSR’s two Fulbright Scholarship recipients, Aparicio and Chavez will spend the 2018-2019 academic year in Mexico carrying out critical research in their fields.
Two students winning Fulbright grants is cause enough for any school to celebrate. But two students winning Fulbright grants to the same country — which accepts fewer than 10 percent of applicants — is something particularly special.
As NSSR extends its warm congratulations to Aparicio and Chavez, Research Matters is excited to share their important work with our wider community. Their stories showcase not only the quality research NSSR students are carrying out but also the doors that such scholarships can open to students at all levels of graduate study who aim to do nothing short of change the world.
New Directions at a New School
For the Brooklyn-born Chavez, charting a future intellectual itinerary was directly linked to connecting with her family’s history. “Being the daughter of Mexican migrants, I was always interested in how U.S. immigration policies were designed at the federal level, and why these policies always created a distinctive binary between the deserving and undeserving migrant.”
While studying political science and getting involved in local activism, Chavez interned on Capitol Hill and found the level of legislative discourse surrounding immigration policy lacking. “How can these politicians talk or even design migration policies when they lack a critical understanding of migration, and have never experienced what is like to live in constant fear of having their family deported? My experiences in Capitol Hill challenged me to think more critically about citizenship and the construction of illegality and rethink migration and mobility beyond a nation-state framework,” Chavez said.
After earning her BA, Chavez sought out ways to research immigration policy at the graduate level, focusing on U.S.-Mexico relations as a way of making a tangible contribution to those communities. ”I was looking for a program that examined public policies, of course, but that also interrogated complex concepts such as citizenship, belonging, membership mobility, and borders. I was also looking for a politics department that studied global political issues beyond a state-centric framework, and NSSR has been the best place for examining these complex concepts,” Chavez explained.
Aparicio’s journey involves migration as well, but has also been driven by an interest in alternative education and the arts — specifically film. She explained that because of changes in tuition and class ratios at her school in Lima, Peru, “we had a student-organized protest that turned into a conference. My role was to do research on alternative forms of education. I found out about John Dewey and I did a presentation about Bennington College and The New School.”
When Aparicio’s undergraduate institution shuttered, she decided to apply to The New School — not to NSSR, but rather to the Schools of Public Engagement (SPE), where she could study film and social science. A generous scholarship and willingness to accept her previously earned credits, plus The New School’s proximity to New York’s film industry, made the choice easy. After graduating and working in film for two years, she realized on-set life was not for her and decided to return to The New School, this time as a graduate student.
“I didn’t know anyone who had come to grad school,” Aparicio recalled, “and so I applied to the school that had opened doors to me before. I had always been interested in the sociology of cultural production, in understanding critically the meaning of cultural production in our society. When I came, however, I was still very much steeped in the language of communications.”
Her transition from film to sociology was marked by an encounter with the professor who would become her doctoral advisor: associate professor of sociology Rachel Sherman. “I remember a meeting early in my first year where she said, ‘You have to stop thinking about what is on the screen and start thinking about the communities that are around the screen that bring the screen to life.’ That completely blew my mind and made me realize, ‘Oh, that’s what I’m interested in!’” Aparicio said, adding, “I feel [Professor Sherman] was the first person who actually knew what to say to direct my gaze in a sociological way.”
Bringing It All Together
Once at NSSR, Chavez similarly worked closely with professors to distill her interests, while also noting the importance of learning from her peers and attending lectures and events on campus. Describing her final research proposal, the one that helped her write her winning Fulbright application, she said, “I am interested in exploring how formal and informal institutions respond to the 'return' and expulsion of migrants from the U.S. to Mexico and the types of organizations and mobilizations that arise after expulsion. Moreover, I also have an interest in decolonial approaches to international relations and to studying migration and mobility. Overall, I am interested in translating theory into innovative political practices.”
Aparicio, on the other hand, developed her dissertation topic in a more hands-on way. “In the second year of my MA, I went to Mexico. I was thinking I was going to write about a social movement that started in the film industry after NAFTA was signed, which had a big impact on the film industry,” she said. While this idea eventually fell by the wayside, it planted the seed for a new research project. Going to the Cineteca Nacional, she started to think about how to research film spaces themselves. Back in New York, Aparicio learned that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was the first museum to include film in its collection, “creating a kind of division between film as art and movies as entertainment.” Deciding to bridge the two cities, she proposed in her PhD application a comparative study of MoMA and Mexico’s Cineteca. In the summer of 2017, a research grant from the Janey Program in Latin American Studies helped her return to Cineteca Nacional and secure important institutional affiliations to bolster her Fulbright application.
Aparicio’s two advisors reflect her diverse academic background. With Professor Sherman, she investigates how prestige is constructed; with University in Exile Professor of Sociology Robin Wagner-Pacifici, she focuses more on the institutions themselves. Economic anthropologist Janet Roitman and a CUNY Graduate Center faculty member round out her preliminary dissertation committee, and she also hopes to collaborate with associate professor of sociology Virag Molnar, who has a special interest in the sociology of art.
Plans for Mexico
For each student, the Fulbright Scholarship is a unique opportunity to propel research forward with fundamental field research.
As Chavez described it, her Fulbright project focuses on “how formal and informal institutions respond to the ‘return’ and deportation of the Mexican diaspora, particularly of the formerly undocumented youth that grew up in the U.S.” She will also probe the types of organizing and mobilization taking place in Mexico after deportation or return, “especially when so many deportees and returnees experience ‘double abandonment’ and estranged citizenship in their country of birth.” Conducting this face-to-face research in Mexico will help Chavez explore this multifaceted phenomenon through a robust “bilateral and transnational lens … [and] see how other scholars and students working on this topic handle similar work and avoid and/or address potential research and fieldwork dilemmas.”
Aparicio’s decision to apply to the Fulbright program came as she reached a crossroads in her early career. “As much as I’m a student, I am also a worker at the university. I’ve been working really hard in order to support myself. So I knew when I went into the PhD that if I was going to take this risk, I had to go all out.”
In practice, this meant that she developed a meticulous study timeline, specifying when she wanted to finish classes, write for publications, and apply for grants. “This year the goal was to get a grant. Otherwise, it just wasn’t sustainable,” she explained.
After attending a workshop run by Katie Wolff, the Fulbright representative for The New School, Aparicio was motivated to apply for the scholarship — especially because the Mexican program explicitly encouraged projects that engaged art communities in the United States and Mexico. She similarly advises future applicants to “know for which grants you’d make a good candidate.”
Fulbright funding, in addition to a dissertation fellowship, will enable Aparicio to stay in Mexico City for nine months, largely researching at the Cineteca. “Now I’m going to be able to just focus on my work. I can’t even imagine what I’ll be able to do over the next year … without having to stress about money, healthcare,” she said.
In addition to attending Wolff’s workshop, Aparicio and Chavez received invaluable encouragement, feedback, and support from Tsuya Yee, assistant dean of academic affairs; Jennifer MacDonald, associate director for graduate career success; NSSR professors such as associate professor of politics Anne McNevin; and SPE professors such as associate professor and chair of Global Studies Alexandra Délano Alonso.
Looking Forward
The young scholars are excited about what’s coming next. In matters both scholarly and personal, the Fulbright is an important achievement. “I look forward to immersing myself as much as possible in my family’s culture,” said Chavez, “meeting new people, learning more about Mexican politics, particularly the relationships between the state and civil society, how the Mexican state manages and addresses migration from its southern border. I hope to become involved in my new community as much as possible…. I wonder how locals will respond to my identity as Mexican and American and to what extent will I fit in the community.”
For her part, Aparicio spoke of a vital opportunity for reconnection. “My parents haven’t been able to come to the U.S., ever. They’ve been denied the tourist visa. So I’m looking forward to being able to go to their next visa interview and show them that I’m a Fulbright.”