Tania Bride (PhD 2024) Awarded 2025 Norris Hundley Dissertation Prize

Tania Bride’s dissertation, “Entangled Creatures: Intercultural Dialogues Over Human-Animal Transformation in the New Spain, 1521–1770,” was awarded the 2025 Norris Hundley Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation on the American West, California, U.S. Expansionism, American Immigration and Ethnic History, Latin America, Pacific Rim and/or Environmental History. The committee members praised the dissertation as lucid and persuasive in its analysis of how the “translation” of Indigenous culture worked as part of ideological and ecological imperialist processes in New Spain. The work impressively examines how colonizers demonized the Indigenous conception of human-animal transformation, demonstrating your linguistic abilities and capacity to interpret the complex cultural interactions shaped by colonial power dynamics.