CSUS 2025-2026 Award Recipient Announcement
This year, the Faculty Research Awards went to Professor Maya Harakawa and Professor Martha Balaguera. Professor Maya Harakawa holds appointments at the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, the Centre for Caribbean Studies, and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History. Her project is titled "After the Renaissance: Making Art and Freedom in 1960s Harlem." Professor Martha Balaguera is Assistant Professor at the UTM Department of Political Science. Her focus is on migrations and social movements in Central America, Mexico and the United States. The title of Professor Balageura's upcoming project is "Legal accompaniment: the struggle to restore asylum at the US - Mexico border."
As the partnership between CSUS and the Northrop Frye Centre deepens and continues, we are pleased to announce this year's doctoral and undergraduate students awarded the CSUS/Northrop Frye Centre Fellowship.
Connor Bennett is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Department of English. His dissertation, which has been supported by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, is titled “Quiet Discontent: Minimalism and Melancholia in American Fiction, 1945–2025.” Kanika Lawton is a PhD candidate at the Cinema Studies Institute, where they are also part of the Collaborative Specialization at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Lawton's intellectual interests coalesce around a broader investment in theorizing and historicizing socio-cultural, political, and aesthetic shifts in a post-9/11 United States through close attention to what they term “surveillant media," as well as an ethical commitment to those most disproportionately impacted by the snowballing effects of U.S. security and surveillance apparatuses.
Undergraduate students Bavan Pushpalingam, fourth-year Public Policy student at the University of Toronto Scarborough, with a Minor in Food Studies and Urban Public Policy Governance, and Melani Veveçka, fourth-year student with a Major in Political Science and Evolutionary Anthropology, have been awarded the CSUS/Northrop Frye Centre Undergraduate Fellowships.
The Graduate Research Grant for this year went to Jatin from the Department of History, researching “Investigating the role of American Agencies and Culture in Shaping the South Asian Cities: Dalit Settlements and Delhi’s Modern Planning (1947-2010)" and Thomas Quist from the Cinem Studies Institute, researching "Cinema as Experience (An Imagobiography)."
Justin Ha, American Studies and Political Science Major, received the New Associates Award (Ontario).
This years Undergraduate Writing Award was awarded to Leo Viscomi (Political Science and Government Major, American Studies and English Minor), and Noah Sokoloff (History and Diaspora and Transnational Studies Major, American Studies Minor), with an honourable mention to Alazne Qaisar (Specialist in Peace, Conflict and Justice Studies, double Minor in Political Science and South Asian Studies).
For more details on CSUS awards and grants, please visit our websites dedicated to student and faculty awards.
