Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda

Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, “Mujeres Que Se Visualizan”: (En)Gendering Archives and Regimes of Media and Visuality in post-1968 Mexico, University of British Columbia – Department of History.

Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda’s thesis is a very engaging and captivating work that provides a complex, rigorous and sophisticated analysis of gender and politics in post-1968 Mexico. Through a local and transnational interdisciplinary lens, the author skillfully weaves together a variety of sources (Mexican secret services archives, private archives, interviews, photography and videography) to examine how the visual letradas or female artists’ counter-narratives to the male-dominated letrados appropriated the city, the media as well as the archives as sites of resistance and intervention. Sepúlveda’s research demonstrates how, by contesting the normative representations of the female body, these women had an impact on the streetscapes, urban life and the complex political landscape of Mexico City. This work makes a significant contribution to the field of women’s and gender history, and exhibits a sophisticated use of archives and diverse archival materials.

Honourable Mention
Allan Downey, “The Creator’s Game”: Aboriginal Racialized Identities in Canada’s Colonial Age, 1867-1990, Wilfrid Laurier University – Department of History.

Allan Downey’s beautifully written and methodologically creative dissertation uses the game of lacrosse as an entry to illustrate how identity is formed, reformed and claimed. By combining documentary and oral records and by introducing the trickster figure Coyote as a way of reflecting Aboriginal epistemologies, “The Creator’s Game” illuminates an easily overlooked aspect of Canadian Native-Newcomers relations. This work’s original approach and its balanced use of multiple perspectives and sources offers a fascinating ethnohistorical account of lacrosse and makes a very significant contribution to Aboriginal history.