Fetta Earns MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies

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Stephanie Fetta, associate professor of Spanish, has earned the annual MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies from the Modern Language Association (MLA). Fetta was honored for her book “Shaming into Brown: Somatic Transactions of Race in Latina/o Literature,” published by Ohio State University Press.

The MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies was established in 2002 and is awarded under the auspices of the Committee on Honors and Awards. It is one of eighteen awards that will be presented on Saturday, Jan. 11, during the association’s annual convention, to be held in Seattle.

In its citation, the award selection committee said, “Stephanie Fetta’s ambitious and theoretically wide-ranging ‘Shaming into Brown: Somatic Transactions of Race in Latina/o Literature’ proposes the “soma” as an “unexpected site of subjectivity” whose physical and emotional registers offer new and expansive ways to read Latinx literature. Fetta’s exploration of how emotive technologies catalyze conformity and marginalization and of the ways the somatic body registers such mechanisms of power is a fascinating approach to the consequences of racial marginalization in the United States. Her transdisciplinary study extends previous work in affect studies and theories of shame, building on theorists like José E. Muñoz and Silvan Tomkins by centering the body in real and material ways. Her case studies are extraordinarily diverse and multigeneric, treating authors of disparate national backgrounds who work across a range of forms. ‘Shaming into Brown’ is fascinating, well- articulated, and painfully relevant. Fetta offers an expansive vision of latinidad and challenges scholars to think broadly about the scope of Latinx cultural production.”

Fetta holds a PhD from the University of California, Irvine. She is the editor of “The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize: An Anthology of Prize-Winning Fiction, Poetry, and Drama” and is considered the foremost authority on the work of the influential Chicano poet Andrés Montoya. She will coedit a 2021 special edition of the “Notre Dame Review” on Montoya’s legacy and is currently working on her second monograph, which investigates the symmetries and tensions  among texts by Zapotec writers living in the United States, contemporary Mexican indigenous writing, and cultural production by Latinxs in the United States.