Ethnomusicology and folklore doctoral student Sophia Enriquez received a Global Arts and Humanities Graduate Fellowship for the 2019-2020 academic year. The fellowship will support Enriquez's dissertation project which documents Latinx music and migration in the Appalachian region of the United States. 

Project Title: "Canciones de Mexilachia: Latinx Music, Identity, and Immigration in Appalachia"

My dissertation project documents and investigates Latinx music-making and identity in the Appalachian region, seeking to make sense of artistic processes of exchange, hybridity and belonging. Specifically, my work interrogates Latinx migration narratives, syncretisms and musical and cultural mobilities in “Mexilachian” music throughout Appalachia and South-Central Mexico. This dissertation is the first book-length project to investigate the music of Latinxs in Appalachia. My work demonstrates how Latinx-Appalachian music reveals new perspectives of immigration in spaces where Latinxs are not part of the dominant cultural narrative. I consider how performance groups such as the Lua Project pursue agendas of social activism and engage Latinx immigrant communities in Central Appalachia. Through observations about music, I develop an artistic lens through which to understand the tumultuous socio-political climate that informs the Latinx experience in the United States.”