The 2020 Stone Center Spring Awards Ceremony: Celebrating excellence in Latin American Studies

On Thursday, May 14th, the Stone Center held a virtual awards ceremony honoring students, faculty, and staff form within the Latin American Studies community at Tulane University. Students and their families, along with professors and members of the Stone Center staff attended this online event to celebrate excellence in Latin American Studies.

The first series of awards were conferred by the Latin Americanist Graduate Organization (LAGO). The Outstanding Faculty Member Service Award went to Jimmy Huck for his excellence in teaching and attentiveness to the needs and interests of Latin American Studies graduate students. Stone Center Program Manager for Academic Programs Hannah Palmer received the Outstanding Staff Member Service Award for selflessly promoting the interests and careers of Latin American Studies graduate students. Graduating Master’s student Erika Pettersen accepted the Outstanding Graduate Student Service Award for generously promoting the interests of Latin American Studies graduate students as a whole.

Following LAGO’s service awards, the Stone Center extended the William J. Griffith Award for Outstanding Teaching Assistant in Latin American to Stone Center Ph.D. candidate Catie Prechtel. This honor is named after William Griffith, who was a noted historian of Central America and served as director of Tulane’s Center for Latin American Studies. He was the first Center Director to secure federal funding for the program and his role as Center Director influenced the development of the core introductory course in Latin American Studies, which our Teaching Assistants have since assumed primary responsibility for delivering.

Hortensia Calvo, Director of the Latin American Library, introduced the recipients of the Guillermo Nánez-Falcón Award for research that substantially incorporates the primary sources and rare materials holdings of the Latin American Library in a semester-long course research paper. The graduate winner was Stone Center Master’s candidate Huiying Cui, whose project entitled “Through the American lens: analysis on early 20th century stereographic cards and other images in the Caribbean” was nominated by Professor L. Rosanne Adderley, from the History department. Sydney Young, the undergraduate winner majoring in Latin American Studies and Public Health, was nominated by Professor Edie Wolfe for her paper entitled “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: State Feminism and Sexual Education Under Lula.”

The Stone Center extended the following four awards for exemplary undergraduate and graduate student research papers:

Best Campus-Wide Undergraduate Paper on a Latin American Topic
Recipient: Jasmine Gloria (Latin American Studies/Anthropology/Art History),
“Excavating the Diaries of Sylvanus Morley: Local Labor Use in Maya Archaeology”
Nominated by: Edie Wolfe, Stone Center for Latin American Studies

Best Campus-Wide Graduate Paper on a Latin American Topic
Recipient: Catie Nuckols-Wilde (Latin American Studies/Art History),
"A Return to Roots: The Maya” Teotihuacan Inscription at Copan’s Temple 26”
Nominated by: Jimmy Huck, Stone Center for Latin American Studies

Donald Robertson Award for Best Graduate Paper in the Humanities
Recipient: Carolina Helena Timóteo de Oliveira (Latin American Studies),
“‘We Ain’t Just Dancing’: Samba de Roda and Religious Freedom in Belo Horizonte, Brazil”
Nominated by: Jimmy Huck, Stone Center for Latin American Studies

Richard E. Greenleaf Award for Best Graduate Paper in the Social Sciences
Recipient: Michael Bromberg (Latin American Studies),
“Huevones, Boludos, and the Routinization of Invectives in Chilean and Argentinian Spanish”
Nominated by: Jimmy Huck, Stone Center for Latin American Studies