Dr Alex Hidalgo Uses NEH Summer Stipend and Fellowship for Field Research
Dr. Alex Hidalgo has been hard at work on his second book project, Mexican Soundscapes of the Colonial Era. The project was selected as one of only 208 humanities projects across the country
to receive funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The fellowship
supported a full year of archival and field research. A portion of the grant funds
were used in the summer of 2023 for a research visit to the Bancroft Library at UC
Berkeley, where he worked with original manuscripts including those pictured below.
Dr. Hidalgo as one of just 13 Texans, and one of 200 scholars nationally to receive
this prestigious award from the NEH.
Dr. Hidalgo's work tihs year built upon previous research in Mexico City, supported by an NEH Summer Stipend in 2021. That year, he was one of six scholars in the state of Texas and one of 92 nationally, who received the highly competitive grant. Dr. Hidalgo explained that his new research considers the way ethnic diversity and racial difference structured people’s understanding of sound and listening during the long eighteenth century.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanitites programs in the United States. “These NEH grants will support educators and scholars in enriching our understanding of the past and enable cultural institutions from across the country to expand their offerings, resources, and public programming, both in person and online.” said NEH Acting Chair Adam Wolfson. “We look forward to the many new insights and discoveries that these 208 exemplary projects will make possible.”
Index of Indigenous place-names, Codex Boturini, facsimile, c. 1890-1910.
Dr. Hidalgo standing on the corner of Haight St and Ashbury St in San Francisco.
Title page, Need for all Mexicans to unite against the ambush of the Spanish nation and the European League, compared against the Ancient History of Tlaxcala, ed. Carlos María de Bustamante (Mexico City, 1826).
Bookseller ad for Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico (London: 1831)
Facsimile, Mexican-Picture Chronicle of Cempoallan (London, 1890).