More wonderful news to celebrate: our alumnus, Dr. Juan R. Barrera (2023), now a newly minted assistant professor, has been chosen for Honorable Mention among those that were nominated for the Rackham Graduate School’s 2023 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards! 

This award marks recognition of scholarly excellence from among the many students who completed doctoral degrees last year at the University of Michigan. Nominees are among a select group who represent the best scholarly work published in Rackham dissertations across a broad range of disciplines.

Professor Rodríguez Barrera is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. He completed his PhD in American Culture, in August 2023 with a stellar dissertation titled “Bronzeville’s Tribunes: Sociology, Marxism, and Literary Afro-Modernism in the Midwest Metropolis, 1936-1947.” His dissertation focuses on the Black Chicago Renaissance, an African American cultural movement that spanned the 1930s and 1940s. Professor Rodríguez Barrera wrote his dissertation under the supervision of Alan M. Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus of English Literature and American Culture and former director of the Program in American Culture.

Congratulations to Juan and his Dissertation Committee!