 |
 |
 |
UH Professor Perales Garners Clements Center Fellowship
Posted: April 20, 2006
Monica Perales, an assistant professor of History at the University of Houton, has received the Summerlee Foundation Fellowship for the study of Southwestern America from the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at SMU. The center provides residential fellowships to junior and senior faculty working in any discipline on projects related to the study of the US Southwest and US/Mexico Borderlands. Dr. Perales will use the fellowship to work on her book manuscript. Tentatively titled Smeltertown: a Biography of a Mexican American Community, Perales s book explores the formation, evolution, demise and collective memory of Smeltertown, the ethnic Mexican company town for the American Smelting and Refining Company copper smelter in El Paso, Texas. El Paso has served as both a gateway for immigration and commerce and as a place where generations of Mexican-origin people have built permanent and enduring communities and forged identities in relation to the reality of the geopolitical border. This manuscript explores how one of these communities formed, changed and defined itself in a culturally fluid and changing place. Smeltertown thus can tell us much about the meaning of borders and borderlands in the 21st century, and the focus on labor and migration will help to illuminate current pressing debates regarding immigration policy.
<< Previous Announcement
Next Announcement >>
