Christine Garcia, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of New Mexico English Department, has been awarded the 2014-2015 Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship.

Garcia, whose concentration is in rhetoric and writing, earned both her B.A. and M.A. from Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, her hometown. While in her master's program, she taught core writing courses, including basic writing, leading her to focus graduate study in rhetoric and composition. Garcia joined the UNM English Department as a neophyte rhetoric/composition student in 2009 and is now in the final year of her Ph.D.

During that time, she also served as graduate assistant for core writing (2010); as a new teaching assistant mentor (2011); as a graduate research assistant for Chicana Studies (2012-2014); as chair for the UNM Writing Across Communities Alliance (2013); and was honored to be named the 2013 Vicente Ximenes Scholar.

Her dissertation, “The Chicana Speaks: A Perspectival Analysis of Dolores Huerta and Chicana Rhetoric,” traces the rich history of Chicana rhetoric in the American polis through the work of Dolores Huerta. Using the approach of perspectival analysis, where media, scholarly and personal renditions of Huerta’s speeches and the sociopolitical contexts of those speeches are explored, Garcia argues that Chicana rhetoric has a broad and deep legacy. The implications of her dissertation speak to the immediate need for rhetoric and composition to honor Chicana rhetors and writers in canonical fields of study.

The Hector Torres Fellowship, a $10,000-$15,000 stipend, was inaugurated in 2010 by the University of New Mexico Center for Regional Studies in memory of the English Department’s slain colleague, Hector Torres.

The Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship supports graduate research and scholarship in the English Department directly related to the late Torres’ fields, as well as the mission of the Center for Regional Studies. Areas include Chicano/a literary and cultural studies; theory (i.e. Marxism; post-structuralism; deconstruction; psychoanalysis; and globalization); film studies; and scholarship related to the mission of the CRS, including history; archival research; literature; and other interdisciplinary fields related to New Mexico, the US-Mexico borderlands, and the greater southwest.