Dr. Joel Correia awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship

April 21, 2021

Dr. Joel Correia has recently been awarded a 2021 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship, in support of his book Disrupting the Patrón: Unsettling Racial Geographies in Pursuit of Indigenous Environmental Justice.

“ACLS fellowships are highly competitive and prestigious, so we at the Center are so excited for Dr. Correia’s fellowship and project,” says UF Center of Latin American Studies Director Carlos de la Torre.

Founded in 1919, the ACLS is a nonprofit federation of 75 scholarly organizations with the mission to advance and circulate humanistic knowledge throughout public society. The ACLS Fellowship Program awards annual fellowships to scholars working in the humanities and related social sciences on a major piece of research and writing. The 2021 cohort includes 60 scholars selected from nearly 1,300 applicants through a rigorous multi-stage peer review process.

“It is an honor to be named an ACLS Fellow among colleagues whose work I value,” Dr. Correia says. “With this fellowship I will complete my first book and advance a fresh take on multicultural politics and environmental justice in Latin America.”

Disrupting the Patrón examines the politics of enforcing three Inter-American Court of Human Rights cases on Indigenous territorial claims in Paraguay’s Chaco. Dr. Correia draws from 18 months of archival, collaborative, and ethnographic research in Paraguay from 2013-2020. The book traces the formation of racial geographies and enduring decolonial struggles of Enxet and Sanapaná peoples who rework the politics of recognition to rebuild territorial relations as a form of environmental justice.

Dr. Correia recently hosted the Center for Latin American Studies’ 69^th annual conference on El Gran Chaco, bringing together frontline actors and academics to explore topics of Indigenous rights, environmental change, and development in the region.

You can learn more about Disrupting the Patrón here.

You can learn more about Dr. Correia here.

You can watch sessions from the 69^th annual conference on El Gran Chaco here.