Alumni Accolades, April 2021

~Class of 2004~

Orly Clergé, IRT ’04 will join the department of Sociology in July 2022 as Assistant Professor at Yale University. Dr. Clergé’s research focuses on race, migration, cities, inequality, and identity. Orly is the author of The New Noir: Race, Identity & Diaspora in Black Suburbia (University of California Press, 2019; winner of the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the ASA Culture Section, and SSSP C. Wright Mills Book Award finalist), which is a comprehensive exploration of the making of Black diasporic suburbs.

~Class of 2014~

Jonathan Cortez, IRT ’14 successfully defended his dissertation and received his PhD from Brown University from the department of American Studies. Congratulations Dr. Cortez! His research interests include 20th century U.S. history, Latinx History, race and race making, relational ethnic studies, critical geography and spatial studies, labor history, and public humanities.

~Class of 2016~

Charlinda Haudley, IRT ’16 is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and is the Project Manager, Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Arizona. Charlinda was awarded her doctorate in Higher Education in 2021 from the University of Arizona. Congratulations Dr. Haudley! Her research focuses on intertribal student engagement at a university Native American student center.

~Class of 2019~

Francesco Yugiro Asano, IRT ’19 is a PhD student in American Studies at New York University. He is interested in questions of race, empire, and nature, particularly in the context of imperial hunting and wildlife-conservation history. Public Books, an online magazine of ideas, scholarship, and the arts has published Francesco’s recent article “When Nature Is Valued over Human Life.”

~Class of 2020~

Congratulations to the 2020 IRT Cohort! So far the cohort has reported a total of 241 acceptance offers from graduate programs across the nation. These offers range from partial to full funding and we will have more details to share in our June 2021 Newsletter. Congratulations to all cohort members for their amazing work throughout this year!