Congratulations to the 2025–26 Ethnic Studies Graduates and Award Recipients

Congratulations to the 2025–26 Ethnic Studies Graduates and Award Recipients

by Keith Miyake Announcements Student News

On June 4, 2026, the Ethnic Studies Department held its annual awards and graduation ceremony. In addition to honoring our graduating undergraduate and graduate students, we had the pleasure of celebrating the 2025–26 award recipients.

Congratulations to all our award winners and graduates

Pictures of the event are located at the bottom of the post

 

Wilmer and Velma Johnson Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Award (Competitive scholarship granted to a rising Sophomore, Junior, or Senior Ethnic Studies Major)

  • Lizeth Sanchez
  • Mariana Sanchez

Barbara Brown Jimenez Memorial Chicano Studies Student Scholarship (Chicano Studies major with an interest in the Catholic community)

  • Karina Roman Diaz

Dosan Ahn Chang-Ho Award (Junior Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA)

  • Anna Bocanegra
  • Emely Castillo
  • Alejandra Diaz

Maurice Jackson Award (Graduating Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA)

  • Lizeth Sanchez

Nominee for the CHASS Tomás Rivera Award (Nominee for the CHASS award for outstanding academic and/or creative achievement and demonstrated commitment to community service)

  • Celestte Lara Serrano

Sumi Harada Award (Graduating Ethnic Studies joint major with the highest overall GPA)

  • Adonai Martinez

Ernesto Galarza Award (Junior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community)

  • Niko Le

Katherine Saubel Award (Graduating senior who best promotes the preservation of cultural awareness)

  • Donna Magana

Barnett Grier Award (Graduating senior who best promotes ethnic awareness)

  • Cynthia Dawson

Sister Rosa Marta Zarate Award (Graduating senior major in recognition of service to the community)

  • Mariana Sanchez

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award

  • Morayma Flores-Higinio

Edna Bonacich Ethnic Studies Graduate Award (Competitive fellowship for new or continuing Ethnic Studies graduate students who have demonstrated a commitment to the promotion of equity in the workplace)

  • Iris Villalpando

Graduating MA Students

  • Kimberly Alvarez Flores

Graduating PhD Students

  • Jenni Martinez
  • Nathaly Ortiz
Master’s Student Paul Aguirre Receives Native Power Building Fellowship

Master’s Student Paul Aguirre Receives Native Power Building Fellowship

by Keith Miyake Student News

Master’s student Paul Aguirre (Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians) recently received a Native Power Building Fellowship from the California Native Vote Project for a campaign to work with UCR’s student-parent committee to improve financial aid access for Native students.

Please meet CNVP Power Building Fellow, Paul Aguirre (he/him), a member of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. A graduate student and researcher, Paul’s work in American Indian Studies focuses on California Native American Studies and Ethnomusicology. He is passionate about community organizing, scholarly research, leadership, and youth development; and is dedicated to advancing Indigenous knowledge, cultural preservation, and empowerment within Native communities. Through the fellowship, Paul is working alongside Fellow Tierra Shelmire to advocate for a Native American Financial Aid Advisor within their Financial Aid office. Their campaign aims to ensure NAOP-eligible students are accurately identified, informed, and enrolled, while advancing a culturally competent financial aid system that respects Tribal sovereignty and reflects the lived experiences of Native students. CNVP’s Native Power Building Fellowship is an 18-month program uniting American Indian, Alaska Native, and Indigenous leaders across California for relationship-building, Indigenized leadership development, organizing, civic engagement, and the launch of community-driven campaigns that advance justice and self-determination for Native peoples. Learn more at https://bit.ly/4bnRDZX.

Congratulations to 2024 Ethnic Studies Award Recipients

Congratulations to 2024 Ethnic Studies Award Recipients

by Keith Miyake Announcements Student News

On June 3, 2024, the Ethnic Studies Department held its annual awards and graduation ceremony. In addition to honoring our graduating undergraduate and graduate students, we had the pleasure of celebrating the 2023–24 award recipients.

Wilmer and Velma Johnson Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Award (Competitive scholarship granted to a rising Sophomore, Junior, or Senior Ethnic Studies Major)

  • Kayla Daniel
  • Blanca Salgado

Dosan Ahn Chang-Ho Award (Junior Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA)

  • Blanca Salgado

Maurice Jackson Award (Graduating Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA)

  • Martie Pablo

Ernesto Galarza Award (Junior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community)

  • Iris Villalpando

Katherine Saubel Award (Graduating senior who best promotes the preservation of cultural awareness)

  • Sanaa Johnson

Barnett Grier Award (Graduating senior who best promotes ethnic awareness)

  • Adrian Rosas Villagomez

Sister Rosa Marta Zarate Award (Graduating senior major in recognition of service to the community)

  • Cuauhtli Ramos

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award

  • Jenni Martinez

Edna Bonacich Ethnic Studies Graduate Award (Competitive fellowship for new or continuing Ethnic Studies graduate students who have demonstrated a commitment to the promotion of equity in the workplace)

  • Eliana Buenrostro
  • Pedro Freire

Graduating MA Students

  • Carolina Apodaca-Morales
  • Michelle Rawlings
  • Kelvin Villalta

Graduating PhD Students

  • Guadalupe Arellanes Castro
  • Takahito Tanaka

In Recognition of Service to the Department and Celebrating Retirement

  • Cynthia (Cindy) Redfield

Boundless Conversations for Boundless Liberation, by Sneha George, Ethnic Studies PhD Candidate

Boundless Conversations for Boundless Liberation, by Sneha George, Ethnic Studies PhD Candidate

by Emily Hue Student News

Ethnic Studies PhD Candidate, Sneha George, reviewed the collection, Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness, for Ancillary Review of Books. Excerpt below:

Despite insurmountable conflict between Native and Black studies being the point of tension of this book, each section of this book is labeled as “Boundless” something. For example, the first section is labeled “Boundless Bodies.” The term boundless forces the reader to pause because you wonder: would insurmountability be an issue if we were truly boundless, if we could become boundless? For example, in the recent tensions between Asian Americans and Black people, would there be tension if Asian Americans were not bound to anti-Black and carceral practices such as linking public safety and police? More generally, would any of our liberatory strategies run into conflict if we were not bound to capitalism, carcerality, and the ideologies of white supremacy? How do we unbind ourselves? How do we explode the bindings that occludes collective liberation?

In the first portion of the book, “Boundless Bodies,” Frank B. Wilderson III, author of Afropessimism and Red, White & Black, and Tiffany Lethabo King, who recently wrote The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, engage in conversation to address the supposedly insurmountable tension between Native organizing and Black organizing. King lets readers know that this was a two part conversation. The first part was uncomfortable for King because she realized she was being “forced to contend with Wilderson’s change of mind and heart about the potential for the Native’s ‘grammar of suffering’ of genocide and the Black’s ‘grammar of suffering’ of fungibility to speak to one another.” Put differently, King was forced to realize that the practice of Native organizing, and the way it articulates itself, requires the suffering of Black people. It does so by using “sovereignty” and ownership of land as the definition of liberation. In Otherwise Worlds, Wilderson, along with Jared Sexton and Andrea Smith, problematize this stance as being fundamentally anti-Black. Wilderson, Sexton, and Smith state that sovereignty and ownership of land always presumes a hierarchy of being and a white-patriarchal understanding of property, ownership, and capital, all of which contribute to the ideologies that render Black people as non-Human.

King cut this conversation short to avoid this discomfort and tension, but she later reached out to Wilderson for a second discussion. The second conversation situates itself in this tension and continues the discussion. King and Wilderson have another enlightening conversation that offers no solutions, no prescriptive analysis on organizing for liberation, and causes the reader to have more questions than resolution. A sort of paradoxical boundlessness came in the moment King decided to continue the conversation past the tensions that came up at first. The paradoxical boundlessness is that, although the conversation did not find a resolution to  the ways in which we are bound to insurmountable tensions, the conversation keeps moving, changing, adding on to itself despite the bindings—within the bindings. Perhaps more than the theories, perhaps even in spite of them, it is the practice of conversing, the creation of a relationship and connection with someone through these conversations that allows for the paradox of boundlessness to come to fruition.

Read the full review here.

Congratulations to the 2020-2021 Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Student Award Recipients!

Congratulations to the 2020-2021 Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Student Award Recipients!

by Emily Hue Announcements Student News

Michelle Rawlings & Darielle Martin – Wilmer and Velma Johnson Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Award: Competitive scholarship presented annually to a student who best demonstrates their writing aptitude and familiarity with Ethnic Studies concepts

Madison Garcia – Katherine Saubel Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior who best promotes the preservation of cultural awareness

Bibiana Canales – Barnett Grier Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior who best promotes ethnic awareness

Christopher Valdez – Sister Rosa Marta Zarate Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community

Michelle Rawlings & Katianna Warren – Dosan Ahn Chang-Ho Award: Presented annually to the Junior Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA

Manuel Zarate & Bibiana Canales – Sumi Harada Award: Presented annually to the graduating Ethnic Studies joint major with the highest overall GPA

Violetta Price & Alana Pitman -Maurice Jackson Award: Presented annually to the graduating Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA

Naomi Waters – Ernesto Galarza Award: Presented annually to a junior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community

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UCR offers the first Cahuilla language course in UC system

by Emily Hue Announcements Student News

Native American Studies Ph.D. student, William Madrigal, is leading an historic initiative to offer Cahuilla language as an accredited language series, making UC Riverside the first UC campus to do so. Article from UCR News by Sandra Baltazar Martinez below:

The University of California, Riverside, is the first UC campus to offer Cahuilla language as an accredited language series.

Cahuilla, the language of Southern California Cahuilla Indian Nations, is offered by the Department of Comparative Literature & Languages at UCR. This four-class series includes three lower-division courses and one-upper division class, which satisfy undergraduate foreign language requirements for most of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences majors.

Doctoral student William Madrigal Jr., a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, has been teaching three of the four classes since their inception in winter 2018. The courses are open to all UC students and Cahuilla tribal community members, thanks to concurrent enrollment.

“The interesting thing here is that Cahuilla is not a foreign language because it’s very much local and indigenous to Riverside County,” Madrigal Jr. said. “Students are learning more than just the mechanics of the language. They are learning about a rich and vibrant culture. They are introduced to the Cahuilla culture, philosophy, and worldview.”

Madrigal Jr., 38, who is working toward a doctorate in Native American Studies, is a member of one of the 10 existing Cahuilla sovereign nations. Growing up on the reservation, located in Anza, about 75 miles south of Riverside, he felt an obligation to attend college and help revive a language that had been suppressed — and almost eradicated — by federal government mandates.

Over 150 years ago, the United States federal government dispersed Native Americans into reservations, sending young children to boarding schools where they were forced into assimilation and only allowed to speak English. The practice of stripping Native Americans from their California lands started around 1850, and as early as 1830 in other parts of the country.

The Cahuilla currently reside on 10 different reservations, their total population ranging from 3,000-5,000 people. Before being separated, their population was more than double that amount, Madrigal Jr. said.

Cahuilla elders and leaders held onto their native language and continued to share oral histories, traditions, and culture with the rest of the families and community throughout this trying period.

“Knowing that our origins were special made me proud growing up,” Madrigal Jr. said. “I’m proud of who I am and where I come from.”

Raymond Huaute, a doctoral linguistics student from UC San Diego, teaches UCR’s upper-division Cahuilla literature course. Huaute is Cahuilla and Chumash California Indian.

Creating and funding these courses at UCR became a multiyear process supported by UCR Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox, as well as the university’s administration, faculty, graduate students, and the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Madrigal Jr. said.

The campus itself sits on land where Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano people once lived and thrived next to the Santa Ana River.

Students in Madrigal Jr.’s three conversational language classes study stories that highlights the Cahuilla way of life, he said.

Madrigal Jr. said the Cahuilla language revitalization movement started roughly 50 years ago, when less than a dozen elders spoke the language daily. Now, because of their efforts, there are hundreds of Cahuilla learners who are working with linguistic and anthropological materials recorded long ago to bring Cahuilla back.

“We’re trying to save the essence of our identity inextricably linked to the Cahuilla culture,” Madrigal Jr. said.

 

Ethnic Studies Accomplishments, 2019-20

Ethnic Studies Accomplishments, 2019-20

by Emily Hue Announcements Faculty News Student News

Download Newsletter!

The UCR Ethnic Studies department has faced a number of challenges this year in addressing COVID-19, meeting student needs in the midst of instability and financial precarity, and the impact of racism on our students brought to light by the mass movement in support of Black Lives. We have issued a statement in support of Graduate Students organizing for a living wage and a statement supporting UCR Undergraduate Students Demands to the UCR Administration. We have also begun our community engagement programs which bring together faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students and community members to address the pressing issues of our time.

Despite these challenging times, UCR Ethnic Studies faculty have found creative ways to teach during the campus shut-down. They have also produced path-breaking scholarship while engaged in diverse community organizing projects. Graduate students have won numerous awards this year. They have taken part in a variety of social justice initiatives while pursuing innovative scholarship. UCR Ethnic studies undergraduates have organized a number of successful projects to improve the well-being of the Riverside community and campus life.

Major accomplishments are below. Read the newsletter for our full report!

Image above from the cover of Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism, featuring art by Kimberly Robertson and Jenell Navarro, “Postcard from an Otherwise World”

Faculty News

Wesley Leonard and Adrián Félix were promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.

Andrea Smith published Unreconciled: From Racial Reconciliation to Racial Justice in Christian Evangelicalism (Duke) and Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism (co-edited with Tiffany Lethabo King and Jenell Navarro, Duke). Otherwise Worlds emerged from the Otherwise Worlds Conference at UCR Riverside.

Jennifer Najera published an OpEd in the Los Angeles Times this Fall, “My Grandpa Was a Dreamer Who Crossed the Rio Grande.” This Spring she was selected as an “Outstanding Faculty Mentor” for the University Honors Program.

Edward Chang was awarded the Order of Civil Merit, Magnolia Medal by the Republic of Korea.

Alisa Bierria published “Battering Court System: A Structural Critique of ‘Failure to Protect'” in The Politicization of Safety: Critical Perspectives on Domestic Violence Responses (co-authored with Colby Lenz, NYU Press).

Emily Hue published “Fifteen Years after Buddha Is Hiding: Gesturing Toward the Future in Critical Refugee Studies” in Women’s Studies Quarterly

Wesley Leonard was awarded a $1 million Mellon Grant to support Indigenous Studies at UC Riverside.

More faculty updates here.

Graduate Student News:

Jennifer Martinez won the Outstanding Teaching Assistant award for AY 2019-2020.

Frank Perez and Lawrence Lan were the inaugural recipients of the department’s Edna Bonacich Award for their community engaged research.

Cinthya Martinez was selected for the GRMP next year to further develop her project, “Freedom is a Place: Abolitionist Possibilities in Migrant Women’s Refusals.”

Beth Kopacz won a dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women to complete her dissertation, “Molecular Longing: Adopted Koreans and the Navigation of Absence through DNA.”

Jalondra Davis (Ph.D. ’17) was awarded a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC San Diego.

Iris Blake’s publication “The Echo as Decolonial Gesture” will be published in Sound Acts, a special issue of the journal Performance Matters. She will be a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA starting in September.

Ray Pineda’s “Authoritative Voice and Mujerista Mentorship of Dissonant DJs Queering Cumbia Sonidera” will appear in Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social.

MT Vallarta’s “Toward a Filipinx Method: Queer of Color Critique and QTGNC Mobilization in Mark Aguhar’s Poetics” will be published with The Velvet Light Trap.

Brian Stephens, “Prissy’s Quittin’ Time: The Black Camp Aesthetics of Kara Walker” appears in Open Cultural Studies.

Undergraduate Student Announcements:

Vivienne Lu won the Wilmer and Velma Johnson Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Award. She also won the Sumi Harada Award for graduating joint major with highest GPA.

Violetta Price and Alana Pitman won the Dosan Ahn Chang-Ho Award for the Junior major with the best GPA.

Christina Canales won the Maurice Jackson award for the graduating major with the highest GPA.

Jazmin Jefferson Faten won the Ernesto Galarza Award in recognition of community service.

Joaquin Malta won the Katherine Saubel award for promotion of cultural awareness.

Kyra Byers and Vivienne Lu won the Barnett Grier Award for promoting ethnic awareness.

Maribel Cruz and Sofia Rivas won the Sister Rosa Marta Zarate Award for community service.

More student updates here.

Quarantine Workouts with the ETST Mutual Aid Collective!

Quarantine Workouts with the ETST Mutual Aid Collective!

by Emily Hue Announcements Student News

Are you having trouble exercising during the quarantine? The UCR Ethnic Studies Mutual Aid Collective is now providing quarantine workouts! See flyer below for more details.

If you would like to participate in our mutual aid collective by providing and receiving support, please sign up at this link: https://forms.gle/FZEJoYNPGs78dhkn8