This summer, three City College of New York students attended Stanford University to immerse themselves in intensive humanities research, each bringing a distinct perspective on Latino culture, history and expression. Through the Stanford-CUNY Summer Research Program, students Albany Andaluz, Kaitlyn Murphy and Tara B. Sanchez joined a cohort of emerging scholars exploring how identity, memory and activism shape the present.
Albany Andaluz: Decoding Dissidence in Dominican Music
Albany Andaluz. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Albany Andaluz.
Dominican music is inescapable in New York City. From moody bachata guitars weeping in the bodega to hypnotic reggaetón rhythms blaring from cars, it’s easy to tune out and miss the messages nestled between notes. But for Andaluz, an Electronic Design and Multimedia student, those songs carry more than melody. At Stanford, she spent eight weeks documenting, decoding and dissecting Dominican slang to uncover the dissent embedded in popular genres.
Her project, “Good Values: Dissent Captured Through Lyrical Content in Dominican Music”, examined how artists challenge conventional norms. Guided by Associate Professor of History Mikael Wolfe, Andaluz embraced the unpredictability of the research process.
“I think there’s something to say about letting the research kind of take its own shape, and being open to the process of discovering something that you hadn’t planned for,” Andaluz said.
Andaluz’s painting “Only God Can Judge Me”. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Albany Andaluz.
Initially planning to archive Dominican colloquialisms in bachata and reggaetón, Andaluz soon found “a language of resistance and dissidence” within the lyrics. She pointed to dembow artist Tokischa, who “mimics the subjugation of women… and reasserts her dominance” through explicit verses that break traditional barriers on what can be expressed in mainstream music.
A Dominican-Ecuadorian painter, Andaluz has long explored how language reveals identity. Her previous work, including the painting “Only God Can Judge Me”, reflects on the philosophical weight hidden in casual sayings.
“Through painting and through making works of art that centered phrases in American culture, and then [evolving] to Dominican culture, I learned that what we say says a lot about us, says a lot about our values, says a lot about how we view the world,” she said.
Kaitlyn Murphy: Reimagining Latinx Literature Through a Decolonial Lens
Stories shape the way cultures remember and move forward. For Murphy, literature became a way to question dominant narratives and reimagine cultural futures. The Queens native, who is of Ecuadorian and Irish American descent, is pursuing her bachelor’s degree in English at City College. This summer, she joined Stanford’s program under the mentorship of José David Saldívar, a leading scholar of Latinx and postcolonial studies.
Kaitlyn Murphy. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Kaitlyn Murphy.
Murphy’s path to scholarship began unexpectedly at Queensborough Community College.
“I started in art history, and then considered film. But I realized what I really liked was the study of both of those mediums, and I took a literature class that really changed everything for me,” she said. “We read Homer’s “The Odyssey”, and I saw so much of my own life reflected in it… I just couldn’t help but read all of it and really fall in love with the way the story was told”.
At City College, Murphy delved into critical theory and memory studies, focusing on how Latin American dictatorships influence contemporary Latinx novels.
Kaitlyn Murphy and her Standford advisor Professor José David Saldívar. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Kaitlyn Murphy.
At Stanford, she analyzed Junot Díaz’s “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars“ and Lyn Di Iorio’s “By the River Cibuco”. Through this comparative work, Murphy questions long-accepted readings of Díaz as a decolonial writer, especially given the misogyny and machismo present in his stories.
“I looked at their representations of bodies and corporeality… and I argued that Di Iorio imagines a decolonial future successfully, whereas Díaz approaches it but ultimately pulls back,” Murphy explained.
Working alongside Saldívar and attending weekly research seminars deepened her sense of scholarly purpose.
“It was a totally transformative experience to talk to somebody who’s been around for so long and has so much knowledge,” Murphy said. “Being at Stanford made it easier for me to envision myself in a Ph.D. program… every conversation I had there left me with a stronger conviction to pursue this path”.
Tara B. Sanchez: Diving into Chicano History At Stanford
History, in all its forms, has the power to evoke emotions and change perspectives, providing context for the present by interpreting the past. A fourth-year BA/MA history student, Sanchez used her Stanford summer to study bilingual and bicultural education within the context of Chicano history in the Southwest and California. She worked with mentor Antero Garcia, Associate Professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, to explore activism and identity in U.S. Latino communities.
“My focus in history has usually been the history of education in America because at one point I was on track to becoming a teacher,” Sanchez said. Her perspective shifted after fieldwork at an international school, where she saw multicultural learning in action.
Her project traced the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, when Mexican Americans pushed for cultural pride, labor rights and educational reform. One key figure she studied was Ernesto Galarza, a labor organizer and scholar who championed bilingual and bicultural programs.
“What stood out to me really was the lack of knowledge, like on a wider scale in America, of these key players, particularly Ernesto Galarza, who is not only a labor organizer but a scholar, a researcher and worked in education as well,” Sanchez said.
Tara B. Sanchez. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Tara B. Sanchez.
Sanchez explored the tension between legal organizations, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which sought civil rights through assimilation, and grassroots activists, who emphasized cultural pride.
“A lot of the way LULAC approached their civil rights cases was, how do we fit Mexicans into this idea of Americanness and a lot of activists who were on the ground and who were organizing with the community, rejected that idea,“ she explained.
Looking ahead, Sanchez hopes to expand her research to include Puerto Rican and Cuban activism surrounding bilingual education, thereby illuminating the diversity of the Latino diaspora.
Though their topics differ, from the subversive power of Dominican music to decolonial storytelling and Chicano educational activism, Andaluz, Murphy and Sanchez share a drive to challenge dominant narratives and expand how Latino identity is studied.
Their summer at Stanford offered more than academic mentorship, it gave them space to envision futures as scholars. Each left the program more certain of their place in the humanities, and of the impact their work can have on how history, literature and culture are understood.
Sofia is a graduate student at CUNY Brooklyn College, where she’s pursuing her M.S. in Media Studies. In addition to writing for The RICC, she’s a writer for the features section of Brooklyn College’s student-run newspaper, The Vanguard. She is also a dedicated writer for the Brooklyn News Service.