Lassen Fellowships in Latin American Studies, 2011-2012

Diana C. Andrade (History)

Andrade earned the B.A. in History from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She has done research on peace processes, amnesties, and reconstruction policies in Colombia, and during her Ph.D. she wants to further explore those issues in a broader Latin American context. Before beginning graduate school she was a consultant for the “Aulas en Paz” program, a school-based intervention aimed at promoting peaceful interactions among children. She then worked as a research assistant for CERAC, a think tank committed to studying violence and peace building, and as a seventh and eighth grade history teacher at Saint George’s School in Bogotá.

Elizabeth L. Hochberg (Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures)

Hochberg earned her B.A. degree in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University and is set to defend her Master’s thesis in Mexican Literature this fall at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her thesis examines descriptions, references, and allusions to the visual arts in the short stories of Mexican writer Efrén Hernández, with a focus on the ways in which Hernández’s representational strategies express specifically avant-garde concerns regarding the relationship between literature and the visual arts. At Princeton, she would like to direct her current research on inter-art relations towards the broader context of Latin American avant-garde literature of the 1920s and 30s.

Amanda I. Mazur '08 (Comparative Literature)

Mazur earned the B.A. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and the M.A. in French literature from New York University in Paris. She has conducted her independent work on the formal features and theory of twentieth-century French and Latin American literature. Her research plans include examining the way in which personal and collective renderings of historical crises utilize metafictional discourse to explore the relationships between justice, literary testimony, history, and imagination.

Bethany A. Park (Politics)

Park earned the B.S.F.S. in Regional and Comparative Studies (Latin America) and a certificate in International Development at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. She also studied at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Previously, she interned at the Washington Office on Latin America, supporting activities related to drug policy and the Andean region and was a Program Manager at Northwestern University’s Center for Global Engagement. Her research interests include interactions between formal and informal institutions as well as the effects of the illegal drug trade on political processes.

Adam F. Pellegrini (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)

Pellegrini earned the B.A. in Biology from Colgate University. During his time there he did research on fish behavior, remote sensing models, paleoecology, plant physiology, and ecosystem ecology. His field of special interest is in resource pool dynamics, looking specifically at biotic and abiotic interactions that are important in nutrient cycles. Pellegrini spent the last year working on tropical community ecology in epiphyte communities found in the canopies of lowland tropical forests in Costa Rica. He is now currently working towards understanding the nitrogen cycle in tropical ecosystems, particularly in Latin America.