Awards and

Congratulations

News about our colleagues
Victor Enrique Milanés was born to Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés and Jorge Milanés. Cecilia will be on family leave in Spring to edit “Of Color” – the latino/a anthology contracted for a series edited by Victor Villanueva for Prentice Hall. She will also be revising her novel, La Buena Vida, co-editing with Lisa Roy-Davis, “Mi Vida Loca” and playing with her new baby.

Gail Okawa was elected to chair the NCTE College Section Nominating Committee, and she was awarded a sabbatical to work on the Smithsonian Language Project. This study would initiate research into the literature of U.S. language history, specifically tapping into archival materials in the Library of Congress and Smithsonian holdings. Sabbatical Study: The Politics of Language and Identity: The Case of Japanese Americans in U.S. Justice Department Internment Camps During WWII. She will be researching the politics of language and identity that led to the incarceration of thousands of Japanese American immigrants, mostly men, who were unjustly arrested immediately after the outbreak of war with Japan (as early as December 7, 1941), and imprisoned in Justice Department internment camps run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The “politics” include notions and policies in the society around them, as well as the individual and personal linguistic choices they made, the language activities they engaged in, considering their dire circumstances as internees.

Octavio Pimental is a research fellow in a new NCTE grant-funded program called Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color. This project title is: “Acts of Buena Gente, Buen Trabajador, and Bien Educado: Success Stories in a Mexicano Community.” He is also a recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholarship (national scholarship) as well as the Rife Jones Scholarship. Most important, Octavio and Charise Nahm (Octavio’s partner, as well as a member of the Latino Caucus) are expecting their first baby. Due date is April 10, 2002.

Lisa Roy-Davis is also a research fellow in the Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color program. Her project is titled “Coming to Consciousness: Learning to Read Race, Gender and Class in the Community College Literature Classroom.” She spent a semester collecting data from her Engl 151 students where they exclusively examined issues of race, class and gender in works of literature.

Amanda Espinosa-Aguilar joined the faculty at Washington State University over the summer of 2001, and is happy to be working di-rectly with Victor Villanueva. She also had two book chapters published and is ecstatic to be back in the Pacific Northwest.

Renee Moreno is on leave for the academic year from her position as Assistant Professor at California State University, Northridge. This year, at the University of Notre Dame, she is completing her own research projects and is working on an edited collection on U.S. Latina spiritualities and Theologies. She was also elected to the College Section Steering
Committee of NCTE.

Maria Franquiz was elected this year to CEE and is chairing the nominating also.

José Irizarry was awarded a Recovery Project Grant from the Arte Publico and University of Houston.

Ivonne Lamazares’ novel Sugar Island has been translated into Spanish – La Isla De Tanya and La Isla De Azucar and is now out in paperback.