AAUW Fellowship Grant Will Support Trinity Professor’s First Book Project

Trinity College Assistant Professor of Language and Culture Studies and Human Rights Studies Diana Aldrete recently was awarded a fellowship to continue her research and complete her first book, Between Land and Death: Women Writing for Justice in Mexico.

The yearlong American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship Program grant was awarded to Aldrete by the American Association of University Women (AAUW). It will provide Aldrete with the time and funding to take her research to the next level while she is on leave from teaching at Trinity during the 2025–26 academic year. “Teaching takes a lot of time, so right now I can just focus on the scholarship,” said Aldrete.

The fellowship program increases the number of women in tenure-track faculty positions and promotes gender equity for women in higher education by providing funding to women in academia to pursue independent research. AAUW American Fellowships are the oldest non-institutional source of graduate and postdoctoral funding for women in the United States.

Between Land and Death dissects literature of gender violence in Mexico. It explores and challenges how literature informs social movements—which in turn inform law—and wrestles with the question of justice, according to Aldrete.

“When we think of justice in terms of laws, they’re ineffective. There are laws in Mexico criminalizing gender-based violence, yet it’s still ongoing,” she said. “The book focuses on how different forms of literature tackle this question of justice.”

The topic of the book came out of Aldrete’s Ph.D. dissertation, which she completed at the University of Albany SUNY. The dissertation focused on gender-based violence in Mexico, specifically how literature represented the killings, and Aldrete is now expanding the research to the issues of justice and human rights, focusing on contemporary Mexican women writers.

At Trinity, Aldrete teaches in the Human Rights Program and the Hispanic Studies Program within the Language and Culture Studies Department, facilitating multiple classes that overlap in both disciplines.

“I teach ‘The Question of Justice and Visual Arts Accounting for Truths at Times of Trauma,’ looking at how the arts have played a role in human rights history in Latin America,” Aldrete said. “I proposed that course specifically thinking about my research.”

Aldrete said she believes that literature has a larger weight outside of the United States. “Here in the States, we think the way to make change is by policy,” she said. “What we see in the rest of the world, and what I see in Latin America, is how literature influences movements, and those movements influence policymaking, and those policies influence the community… When we think about authoritarian regimes, the first thing they burn are books, for a reason! I’m focusing on how these writers get involved in movements of anti-gender violence in Mexico, and how their words get into the community to the point where it pushes policy.”

With the support provided by the fellowship grant, Aldrete plans to travel to Mexico to interview the writers featured in her book. Aldrete also will use the funding to workshop the final chapters of her book, as well as to present her visual art in Houston at a conference. Additionally, she will be presenting part of a chapter from her book in November at the National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference in Puerto Rico. Next spring, Aldrete will attend the Modern Language Association Convention in Toronto and the Latin American Studies Association Congress in Paris.

“It’s going to be a big year, so the time off is very welcome,” she said.