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Mellon Fellows, 2012-2014

The Center for the Americas Andrew W. Postdoctoral Fellows for 2012-2014 are:

Ana Paula Hofling holds a PhD in Culture and Performance Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, an MFA in Dance from the University of Hawai`i at Manoa and a BA in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley.  Her PhD dissertation, “Dancing, fighting, and staging capoeira: choreographies of Afro-Brazilian modernity and tradition,” analyzes the tradition/modernity debates that have shaped contemporary capoeira, tracing the changes in capoeira’s movement vocabulary from the late 1920s through the 1970s.  Her research bridges the disciplines of dance studies, Latin American studies, critical race studies and tourism studies; her recent scholarship investigates processes of folklorization and staging of embodied traditions, as well as the choreographic and ethnographic work of early twentieth-century proponents of “national dance” in Brazil.  Her most recent publications include the entry on capoeira for the Routledge Online Encyclopedia of Modernism (forthcoming) and the essay “Performing Brazil: Viva Bahia’s choreographies of Afro-Brazilian folklore for the global stage” for the edited volume Performing Brazil (forthcoming).  She is a member of the Society of Dance History Scholars, the Congress on Research in Dance, the Brazilian Studies Association and the Latin American Studies Association.  Höfling is a Royal Academy of Dance-trained ballet dancer and a capoeirista, studying with Mestre Jogo de Dentro and the Grupo Semente do Jogo de Angola since 2005.

 

Courtney Lewis earned her Ph.D in Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (2012), her M.A. in Economics at Wayne State University, and her B.A. in Economics at the University of Michigan.   She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

Dr. Lewis’s book manuscript, The Business of Being Cherokee, examines the intertwining of economic stability, sovereignty, and settler-colonialism via small businesses on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. This work has been supported by: the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Royster Society of Fellows Sequoyah Dissertation Fellowship, the Dr. David McNelis Scholars of Tomorrow, the Cherokee Nation Education Corporation Nell D. Brown Memorial Award, the Cherokee Nation Education Corporation Mission Award, the Archie Green Occupational Folklife Graduate Fellowship, the Lynn Reyer Award for Tribal Community Development, the Special Graduate School Doctoral Merit Assistanceship, the North Carolina Native American Incentive Grant and the Future Faculty Fellowship Program.

She has been elected into leadership positions as the President of the First Nations Graduate Circle UNC–Chapel Hill, the President of the Society for Anthropology Graduate Students UNC–Chapel Hill, and  the Faculty Liaison of the Society for Anthropology Graduate Students UNC–Chapel Hill, amongst others.

Her business experience includes working directly in finance and co-founding Anomaly, Inc.