2020 Cohort

Adriana Chavez

Adriana Chavez is a junior at Hunter College majoring in English literature and criticism with a concentrated focus in Italian. In addition to being a Mellon Mays fellow, she is also a Mellon Public Humanities scholar.

Her research interests include U.S. literature, women and gender studies, African American literature, ethnic studies and food studies. Her current research explores the role of food and hunger in the novels of Toni Morrison, with a particular eye to their connection to power and emotional nourishment.

A freelance writer, she has written for the Women's Media Center, Girls Who Code, Day of the Girl-US, and Xandr.

Joselyn Garcia

Joselyn Garcia is a junior at Hunter College and is an art history and classical studies major with a minor in theatre. She is a Bluhm and Athena Honor scholar in addition to being a Mellon Mays fellow. Joselyn has won the Latin Excelsior Prize and is a member of Eta Sigma Phi. Joselyn also has a keen interest in the theatre community, having participated in departmental productions as an actress, assistant stage manager and costume designer; she also enjoys singing as a tenor with the Hunter College Choir.

Joselyn does research exploring classical reception in the Italian Renaissance. She hopes to further understand why classics has survived as long as it has and how its iconography has managed to remain as prevalent as it is.

She is currently conducting research on how Cosimo Il Vecchio used classical imagery and thought to rise to power in Florence and establish a dynasty.

Sheena Rocke

Sheena Rocke is a junior at Hunter College triple majoring in English, Africana studies, and cultural anthropology. Not only is she a Mellon Mays fellow, but she is also the secretary of Hunter’s Sigma Tau Delta chapter and The Olivetree Review’s poetry editor.

She often finds herself most interested in topics such as slavery, racial identity and popular culture. Sheena is currently conducting research on the origins and progression of respectability politics. She endeavors both to analyze the role of respectability politics as a site of negotiation in different historical Black movements and conversations, and then to better understand the legacies of those negotiations on present movements and conversations.

After college, her goal is to blend her love of creative writing with her passion for research in Africana studies.

Marina Samuel

Marina Samuel is a junior at Hunter College majoring in political science and minoring in political theory with a concentration in English literature. In addition to being a Mellon Mays fellow, Samuel is a Mellon Public Humanities scholar and a Thomas Hunter Honors scholar.

Her research focuses on global Marxism, anticolonialism and anti-imperialism. She is committed to understanding the ways in which people of the Global South mobilize against capitalism and form their own political systems. In particular, she focuses on Latin American and African contributions to Marxist theory.

Presently, she is interested in how the political philosophy of Neozapatismo in Mexico offers a decolonial perspective of Marxist forms of resistance and government.

Kristie Sanchez

Kristie M. Sanchez is a junior at Hunter College majoring in political science and economics and minoring in French literature. In addition to being a Mellon Mays fellow, Kristie is also a Thomas Hunter Honors scholar, JFEW Eleanor Roosevelt scholar and a Roosevelt scholar.

Recently, Kristie was a participant in the Grove Mississippi Service trip and a summer intern at the office of New York State Senator Michael Gianaris. Kristie’s interest in the ways politics and economics shape the economic trajectory of different countries as well as in Latin American development has shaped her academic research and her future career path.

Presently, she is researching the role of different economic development theories on regional integration efforts in Latin America.