Notre Dame anthropologist awarded prestigious Newberry Fellowship | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › Notre Dame anthropologist awarded prestigious Newberry Fellowship Notre Dame anthropologist awarded prestigious Newberry Fellowship Published: April 17, 2020 Author: Brian Wallheimer Alex Chavez 1200 Preferred The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Notre Dame anthropologist Alex Chávez a long-term residential fellowship at the Newberry Library in Chicago. During the nine-month fellowship, Chávez will work on a second book project, tentatively titled Audible City: Urban Cultural History, Latinx Chicago, and the Sonic Commons, that explores the relationship between sound and the city of Chicago. In particular, Chávez is focusing on the connection between aurality and Latinx claims to citizenship in urban contexts, in particular, how sound-making, hearing and listening form a nexus of  common social recognition. “I am interested in the history of Chicago’s built environment, particularly the formation of its neighborhoods, which this project interprets as a series of auditory and cultural palimpsests; the historical emergence of Chicago’s cultural aesthetics; and the sonic dimensions of Latinx forms of cultural production that stake claims of belonging in the city,” said Chávez, the Nancy O’Neill assistant professor of anthropology and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies.  The fellowship gives Chávez access to Chicago’s Newberry Library, an independent research library dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge in the humanities with 1.6 million books, 5 million pages of manuscripts and 600,000 maps in its collections. “Chicago’s neighborhood guides, genealogies and local histories at the Newberry will be key in tracing both the complex history of Chicago’s urban development and its social aesthetic, all of which is bound up with sound in one way or another,” Chávez said.  “This project calls for an integration of sound studies and an anthropology of placemaking that works toward a perspective on Latinx urbanism. This disciplinary crossing is what access to the Newberry Library collections will make possible at this stage in my research.” Chavez’s first book, Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño, took an in-depth look at Mexican migrants’ cultural expression through music. It received high praise from his peers, including winning the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology Book Prize, the Association for Latina and Latino Anthropologists Book Award and the Alan P. Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. Originally published by Brian Wallheimer at al.nd.edu on April 15, 2020. Posted In: Faculty and Staff Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Related October 04, 2022 NIH awards $4 million grant to psychologists researching suicide prevention September 09, 2022 Karrie Koesel to testify before Congressional-Executive Commission on China August 18, 2022 Two faculty win NEH grants to research history of red hair, philosophy of revelation August 16, 2022 NSF names Center for Computer-Assisted Synthesis a Phase II Center for Chemical Innovation August 15, 2022 Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., on Russian atrocities against clergy in Ukraine For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn