Northeastern Illinois University Associate Professor of History and Latino/Latin American Studies Christina Bueno has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend grant.
The NEH Summer Stipend supports individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both. Fewer than 10 percent of applicants are awarded the grant.
Bueno plans to work on her second book project, “Excavating Identity: Archaeology in Revolutionary Mexico, 1920-1940,” a comprehensive study of the different facets of government-sponsored archaeology during the two decades following Mexico’s 1910 revolution.
“The revolution transformed Mexico’s cultural landscape. It unleashed a concerted effort to exalt the pre-Hispanic past,” Bueno said. “As famous artists such as Diego Rivera glorified the ancient Indians in huge murals on government buildings, archaeologists set out to reconstruct the remains of antiquity, leaving behind a landscape full of pristine ruins. The government sponsored these projects in an effort to construct a history that stretched back to pre-Hispanic times.”
Bueno will return to Mexico to spend two months this summer analyzing documents in Mexico City’s Historical Archive of the National Museum of Anthropology and the National Library of Anthropology and History where she researched her first book.
“The first NEH grant was a Faculty Fellowship in 2011-2012,” Bueno said. “It allowed me to go on leave for an entire year and complete my first book, ‘The Pursuit of Ruins: Archaeology, History, and the Making of Modern Mexico.’”
Bueno also has previously received grants from the Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Fulbright Institute.
Christina Bueno
