Brenda Quintana Awarded Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship

2017 May 10

Brenda Quintana was one of six students awarded a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship this spring. The fellowship is the centerpiece of the Andrew Mellon Foundation's initiatives to increase the presence of traditionally underrepresented groups in the faculty ranks of institutions of higher learning in the U.S.

Fellows participate in the program during the last two years of undergraduate study and receive a monthly stipend to offset work study requirements, modest research funds, and additional summer research funding as part of the fellowship. Upon successful completion of graduate study, Mellon Mays Fellows also receive up to $10,000 to assist in repayment of student loans.

Quintana’s research is informed by her experience as “a brown Latina woman who is a first generation, low- income college student at an elite liberal arts school and a first generation immigrant who grew up in conservative and religious Utah.” She is interested in studying the intersections between Latinidad and Mormon culture, specifically examining missionary work in Hispanic communities in the US and Latin America. This research works to deconstruct historical narratives within American history by applying indigenous, racial and ethnic study frameworks. “Mormon history, although a rather niche subject area, is situated in America’s history of frontier expansion, settler colonialism, and imperialism, making it an interesting history and culture to examine within racial and indigenous contexts,” she said. Quintana is majoring in American studies.