LATINO STUDIES AND CREATIVE WRITING PARTNER TO CREATE
FUNDING OPPORTUNITY AT NOTRE DAME
The
University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), in collaboration
with Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program, is pleased to announce the creation
of a two-year graduate assistantship for an incoming M.F.A. candidate in poetry
beginning in the fall of 2014.
The
recipient of the assistantship will be selected from the pool of students
admitted to the Creative Writing Program by the M.F.A. program, in consultation
with the Institute for Latino Studies. The selected candidate, in addition to
the tuition waiver all admitted students receive, will also receive a $12,500
stipend for each of his/her two years in the program. The selected poet will
work with the ILS’ literary initiative, Letras Latinas.
M.F.A.
alum Lauro Vazquez (‘13), the current third-year Creative Writing Sparks Fellow, served as
a model for the creation of the assistantship. “The experience we had with
Lauro was such a positive one that we wanted to explore a way of repeating it, but in a more formal manner”
said Francisco Aragón, ILS faculty member who oversaw Vazquez’s work with Letras Latinas.
Among
the projects Vazquez carried out while pursuing his graduate degree was
organizing the inaugural young poets gathering, which brought to Notre Dame
Latino/a writers from other graduate programs around the U.S. They convened
last April, along with Latino/a M.F.A. candidates at Notre Dame, for a weekend
of fellowship and networking, as well as an informal poetics seminar offered by
award-winning poet and Notre Dame professor Orlando Menes. "Organizing the
poetry retreat felt like a supplementary thesis in a way—like the culmination
of the work I'd been doing at the Institute, work that involved not only
creating content at Letras Latinas Blog, but also creating spaces to foster community. The retreat was among the most meaningful things I did as
a graduate student, and I got a definite sense that it was meaningful for
the others too," said Vazquez.
The
recipient of the new assistantship will be tasked with developing this project
further, now named the Letras Latinas Writers Initiative, as a coordinator. But no less important
is providing the incoming M.F.A. candidate with opportunities for growth, as a
writer. “Lauro
has made tremendous strides as a poet who grounds his cross-cultural poetics in
a sophisticated fusion of myth and history,” said Orlando Menes, who directed
Vazquez’s M.F.A. thesis. “I look forward to mentoring the next generation of
Latino poets who see culture as fertile soil for their poetics,” Menes added,
looking ahead to working with the selected candidate.
The
creation of this stipend is consistent with the ILS’ mission of providing
funding opportunities to graduate students in Latino Studies. According to ILS
Director, José Limón: “Together with our
intense faculty recruitment, this ILS graduate funding opportunity in creative
writing, under the direction of our esteemed colleague, Orlando Menes, is the
first major step toward and model for the creation of an ILS-focused program of
graduate study within the cognate departments of the College of Arts and
Letters. In the future, we want any student contemplating graduate work in
Latino Studies to put Notre Dame at the very top of his or her list of
programs.”
Since
its creation in 1999 the Institute for Latino Studies has played a vital role
in fostering understanding of the US Latino experience. Building upon the
outstanding intellectual legacy of Julian Samora, a pioneering Latino scholar
and professor, the Institute supports interdisciplinary initiatives in Latino
Studies as a key component of the University’s academic mission.
The
Creative Writing Program is a two-year course of study, culminating in a Master
of Fine Arts in English. It is a literary immersion program, inviting students
to engage in the writing life of the university by taking courses in
literature, the writing of poetry and/or fiction, and a wide range of electives
suited to the particular interest of the student. The writing life of the
program also includes participating in a range of editorial and/or teaching
opportunities, as well as the new Latino Studies assistantship.
For further information contact:
Orlando Menes,
Director of Creative Writing
Fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies
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