RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Contemporary (i.e. late 20th/early 21st century) Latina and African American literary and cultural studies, particularly with an emphasis on gendered representations
AFFILIATIONS:
- The Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers
- Yale University\'s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program
- The Leadership Alliance
- Marymount College of Fordham University Alumnae Association
- Graduate Merit Fellow, the University of Iowa
- Teaching Assistant, Department of Rhetoric, The University of Iowa
- Second Organization: participation level
PERSONAL PROSE:
I was born and raised in Long Island New York, where in 2000 I entered into Marymount College, a small women\'s college that consolidated with Fordham University in 2002. During my undergraduate career, I also participated in academic programs outside of my college, namely Yale University\'s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program, designed for minority undergraduates who aspired to go to graduate school, as well as the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers, both programs of which were designed for minority undergraduates who wanted to go to graduate school. During the spring of 2003 I studied for a semester at St. Andrew\'s University in Scotland. I graduated in 2004 from Marymount(and was also the valedictorian at the college\'s May 2004 graduation ceremony) I officially received my diploma from Fordham in February 2004, and spent the subsequent spring semester interning for my Congresswoman, Mrs. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) in Washington, DC. I matriculated into the University of Iowa\'s English and Literary Studies graduate program that following September, with an interest in focusing my studies (which would eventually lead to the comprehensive examination, the dissertation prospectus and eventually the dissertation) in Latina and African American literature and cultural studies. In May 2005, I applied to and was accepted into the Sisters of the Academy Research \"Boot Camp\" and Symposium, a one week program which took place at Auburn University, where I studied with mentor Dr. Denise Davis-Maye and gained not only insight into research methodologies at the doctoral level, but also I gained a greater sense of confidence and heightened self esteem in myself as an African American/Latina graduate student. In April 2006, I will present my first paper at a graduate level conference: The Art of the Fairy Tale from Grimm to Shrek and All the Ogres in Between, which is to be held at Kent State Univeristy, Ashtabula (Ohio). The title of my paper is \"Walt Disney\'s Cinderella and Elisa Izquierdo: Questioning the American Public\'s Fascination with Myth and Martyred Heroines,\" in which I create a careful analysis/application of the gender constructions evident in Cinderella to a considerably noteworthy 1995 news story. This is a project that I continually hope to build upon after the conference, and to incorporate into other academic projects (i.e. the comps, and possibly the dissertation). In August 2005, I entered into a teaching assistantship in the University\'s Rhetoric department.
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