The MLA has awarded the association’s Edward Guiliano Global Fellowships to sixteen PhD students and candidates in MLA-related disciplines. The fellowships provide up to $2,000 to support travel and research related to the completion of a dissertation, generation of a publishable peer-edited journal essay, or production of other publishable outcomes. The awards also support experiential-learning experiences for humanities PhDs interested in careers outside academia. “In its third year, this fellowship continues to support an incredible range of humanities research by graduate students. This year’s projects showcase the truly global scope of recipients’ work, including research focused on South Asia, Spain, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and more,” said Paula M. Krebs, the executive director of the MLA. “Thanks to the contributions of Edward and Mireille Guiliano, the MLA has been able to increase our investment in the professional development of our members pursuing a variety of career paths. We’re excited to be able to make this commitment to the future of groundbreaking research.”
The recipients of the Edward Guiliano Global Fellowships were honored on 9 January 2026, during the MLA Annual Convention, held in Toronto, Canada. The selection committee members were Logan Connors (Univ. of Miami), Evgeny Dengub (Univ. of Southern California, Dornsife), Daniel Fried (Univ. of Alberta), Stephen Knadler (Spelman College), Anwesha Kundu (Centre College), Nora Martin Peterson (Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln), Danielle O. Pyun (Ohio State Univ.), Lara Vetter (Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte), and Amy Woodbury Tease (Norwich Univ.).
The recipients of the Edward Guiliano Global Fellowships and their project titles are:
- Yuki Bailey (Univ. of California, Los Angeles) – “Casualties beyond the Battlefield: Women’s Wartime Health through the Lens of World War II”
- Chandrica Barua (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor) – “Plantation Genres: Race, Labor, and Literature in Colonial South Asia, 1850–1950
- Ruoyi Bian (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – “Governing Desire: Archival Research and Oral Histories of Hong Kong Erotic Cinema, 1980–1997”
- Anna Brotman-Krass (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor) – “Migrant Domestic Laborers and Care Workers in Spain: The Translation of Performing Arts–Based Activism into Film”
- Min Ji Choi (Harvard Univ.) – “State-Sanctioned Sanctity: Sonic Ethnography of Oti Byeolsinje (Ot’i Pyŏlsinje)”
- Catherine A. Evans (Carnegie Mellon Univ.) – “The Provocative Lesbian: Queer Media of the Long Seventies”
- Sarah Frank (Univ. of Iowa) – “Juggernaut Infrastructure: Modernism and the Machine Age”
- Salwa Y M Halloway (Princeton Univ.) – “The Policing of Black Sound in West Indian Slave Societies”
- Oana Alexan Katz (Northwestern Univ.) – “Heritage Unbound: A Digital Archive for Teaching Cultural Memory in Spain”
- Rachel Kirk (Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge) – “(Un-)natural Disaster, Cultural Loss, and Preservation in the Franco-Creole Caribbean”
- Eunice Lee (Harvard Univ.) – “Intensive Dictations: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Voice at the BAMPFA”
- Jade Shiva (Univ. of Texas, Austin) – “Embodied Rhetoric, Storytelling, and the Politics of Care”
- Anu Sugathan (Univ. of Oregon) – “Visual Storytelling, Gender, and Caste in the Patua Tradition of Naya Village to Tara Books”
- Tian Jing Teh (Univ. of Southern California) – “Remembering Silences: Southeast Asian Mnemonic Writings and the Disappearance of Inter-Asian Hiroshima”
- Assel Uvaliyeva (Univ. of Southern California) – “Recovering the Lost Voices of Tatar Avant-Garde”
- Lauren White (Univ. of Southern California) – “‘An Alien Land of Fences’: Indigenous Borderlands, Networks of Surveillance, and D’Arcy McNickle”
About the Edward Guiliano Global Fellowship
The Edward Guiliano Global Fellowship is supported by a fund established by Edward and Mireille Guiliano. The fellowship is designed to encourage graduate students in languages, literatures, and related fields to pursue transformative experiences by exploring research and learning opportunities beyond their immediate community. “We established this fellowship to help eliminate some of the barriers that prevent students from undertaking the research they are passionate about and to give them formative experiences that expand their world view,” said Edward Guiliano. “We want to encourage our fellows to have the confidence to step outside their comfort zones.”
About the Modern Language Association
The Modern Language Association of America and its members work to strengthen the study and teaching of languages and literature. Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. The MLA sustains one of the finest publication programs in the humanities, producing a variety of publications for language and literature professionals and for the general public. The association publishes the MLA International Bibliography, the only comprehensive bibliography in language and literature, available online. The MLA Annual Convention features over 700 scholarly and professional development sessions. More information on MLA programs is available at http://www.mla.org.
About Edward and Mireille Guiliano
Edward Guiliano received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University and his master’s and
doctoral degrees from Stony Brook University. He joined the faculty at the New York Institute of
Technology (NYIT) in 1974 as an English instructor prior to finishing his PhD. In 2000, he
became president of NYIT and served until early 2017. Mireille Guiliano completed her
bachelor’s degree at Sorbonne Nouvelle and holds the French equivalent of a master’s degree
in English and German. She is the author of the international best seller French Women Don’t
Get Fat, among other writings, and has held leadership roles with LVMH along with other
business endeavors.