ASA and the Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) are pleased to introduce the five new scholars who comprise MFP Cohort 43. The MFP Advisory Panel met this spring in Washington, DC, to review the large and highly competitive pool of applications. Keeping with tradition, MFP Cohort 43 consists of talented PhD candidates with strong and diverse sociological research interests. The new Fellows will officially begin their participation in MFP on August 1, 2016.
The new Fellows will attend the 2016 ASA Annual Meeting in Seattle, where they will take part in a day-long orientation, including a brief history of ASA and a series of research- and professional development-themed presentations by sociologists (all former Fellows themselves). The new Fellows will also participate in a number of required sessions, events, and workshops, including a breakfast meeting with the six members of MFP Cohort 42. They will have the opportunity to network with sociologists who share similar interests. Cohort 43 will be introduced during the MFP Benefit Reception on Sunday, August 21. Those wishing to attend the MFP Benefit Reception can purchase tickets to this event when registering for the Annual Meeting, or at the door of the event.
Since 2010, MFP has been generously supported in full by Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD), the Midwest Sociological Society (MSS), the Association of Black Sociologists (ABS), the Southwestern Sociological Association (SSA), and ASA Council, with more recent support coming from the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) and the Southern Sociological Society (SSS). Support for MFP has also come from significant gifts made by individual ASA members annually and through the MFP Leadership Campaign in which SWS and the Eastern Sociological Society (ESS) participated as donor organizations.
Julia Arroyo (MSS/Council MFP)
Undergraduate Institution: Bowling Green State University
Graduate Institution: University of Florida
Julia Arroyo is a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida (UF). Her research interests include race and ethnicity, child welfare systems, and families, children, and youth. Her work promotes positive outcomes among racial-ethnic minority youth and youth in zero-parent households (e.g., with grandparents or foster parents) and creates space for their experiences in theories of their well-being. Her dissertation examines the changing prevalence and characteristics of zero-parent households in the United States. Applying qualitative and quantitative methods, it links the formation of these households, and the destinies of those within them, to broader social, economic, and political circumstances. Her awards include ICPSR Summer Program’s Clifford C. Clogg Scholarship (2014), UF Sociology, Criminology, and Law’s Gorman Award for Innovative Methods (2014), and the UF Connor Dissertation Award (2016). Her co-authored works address historical change in women’s age at first birth and marriage, and child welfare caseworkers’ attitudes toward non-resident fathers. Forthcoming works include an interdisciplinary brief on preventing children’s use of racial-ethnic stereotypes, and a review of Massey and Brodmann’s (2014) Spheres of Influence. In-progress works problematize the role of caseworkers’ attitudes in father engagement outcomes, critique measurements of family environments, and characterize young adult pathways out of non-parental households.
Stephanie Canizales (SWS MFP #1)
Undergraduate Institution: University of California-Los Angeles
Graduate Institution: University of Southern California
Stephanie L. Canizales is the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants who arrived in Los Angeles as an unaccompanied child migrants in the 1970s. As a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California, her research focuses on the unaccompanied migration and integration experiences of undocumented Latino immigrant youth— ranging from low-wage garment or domestic workers to university graduates. Stephanie received her BA in Political Science, Latin American Studies and Global Studies from the University of California-Los Angeles. Her research and teaching interests include international migration, immigrant incorporation, unaccompanied child migration, and undocumented youth life course, mental health, and well-being. In her dissertation, Stephanie uses in-depth interviews and participant observation with “unparented” young adults who arrived in the U.S. as unaccompanied minors in order to understand how youth’s familial and community contexts of reception shape incorporation pathways. She examines the ways in which being received by a non-parent family member, obtaining a mentor, or remaining without networks of support shapes participation in work, school, and the local community and youth’s feelings of belonging. Stephanie has received numerous university awards, as well as support from the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, the National Science Foundation, and the Haynes Foundation.
Celeste Curington (SWS MFP #2)
Undergraduate Institution: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Graduate Institution: University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Celeste Vaughan Curington is a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked as a program assistant for the University of Pennsylvania College Achievement Program (PennCap) and research assistant at the UPenn Africana Studies Center. Celeste’s several lines of research examine race, class, and gender through the lens of care labor and migration, family, housing, and assortative mating. Her published work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and the London School of Economics American Politics and Policy Blog, as well as in several media outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, and NBC. Her dissertation ethnography centers on the position of African transnational migrants to Lisbon, Portugal, at a time of economic crisis, care deficit, and increased anti-immigrant sentiment. She analyzes Cape Verdean eldercare workers’ struggles and resiliencies as paid and unpaid caregivers, migrants, mothers, and racialized workers in a former colonial metropole. Celeste’s other research focuses on residential segregation and neighborhood choice, multiracial identity, and online mate selection. She is currently pursuing two collaborative projects— using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS) and the Census, she examines the locational attainment of interracial households, and the other is an interview study that centers on interracial couples’ neighborhood choices. Celeste has received support from the National Science Foundation and the UMass Graduate School.
Yader Lanuza (AKD MFP)
Undergraduate Institution: Hampshire College
Graduate Institution: University of California, Irvine
Yader R. Lanuza is a doctoral candidate at the University of California-Irvine. Yader’s dissertation examines immigrant-native differences in the contributions that children make to their households throughout the life course. Utilizing nationally representative data, he examines whether children in immigrant and native-born families provide academic, emotional, and financial resources to their household members from childhood to adulthood. In addition to his dissertation, Yader is involved in a number of collaborative projects that delve into his research interests in migration, immigrant incorporation, sociology of the family, sociology of education, the transition to adulthood, and economic sociology. His work has been published in a number of scholarly venues, including Sociological Perspectives, International Migration Review, and Teorija in praksa (Theory and Practice). Yader is a 2016-2017 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow and was the 2015 runner-up for the Beth B. Hess Scholarship from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. At his home institution, he was a Eugene Cota-Robles Fellow (2010-2014), a Faculty Mentor Fellow (2012), and received a departmental service award from his department (2013). He received a bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College and a master’s degree at New York University.
Robert Reece (ABS/Council MFP)
Undergraduate Institution: University of Mississippi
Graduate Institute: Duke University
Robert L. Reece is a doctoral candidate at Duke University. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology at the University of Mississippi. Drawing on his upbringing in the Mississippi Delta, Robert’s dissertation research examines the origins of racial inequality, particularly how places’ local reliance on slave labor shapes the intensity of their racial inequality. Preliminary results, including a recent paper published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, suggest that increasing reliance on slave labor in 1860 is associated with greater black-white racial disparities on a number of contemporary social indicators even when controlling for a variety of contemporary and historical covariates. His other research examines colorism and intraracial inequality. Additionally, Robert attempts to put his writing and research skills to use outside of the academy. He is on the editorial board of Scalawag, a magazine startup that focuses on politics and culture in the American south. He occasionally lends his research skills to Frontline Solutions, a consulting firm that strives to improve the lives of black men and boys. He has also written pieces for the magazines of the Southern Poverty Law Center and National Housing Institute.
