Contact

For questions, contact the Tom Lea Research Fellowship Program Faculty Liaison, Dr. Selfa A. Chew-Melendez,  Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, College of Liberal Arts.

Sachewsmithart@utep.edu
(915) 747-5781

About Dr. Selfa A. Chew

Dr. Selfa A. Chew holds a PhD in Borderlands History from The University of Texas at El Paso. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Science from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and her MFA in Creative Writing from UTEP. She studied Fine Arts at Pasadena City College and the Art Center College of Design. Dr. Chew served as an editor for Border Senses Literary Review and coordinated the Mexican Contemporary Literature Conference and Journal until 2012. She was a Smithsonian Fellow in the Latino Image Representations and Interpretation Institute. Her work (poetic, graphic, narrative, and editorial) has been published in Peru, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, China, the Netherlands, and the United States. She received the Voces al Sol award by the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez in 2015 for her work as a playwright. Dr. Chew’s research focuses on racial relations, the Asian and African diasporas, and World War II. She is currently Associate Professor of Instruction at the Department of History, and the African American Studies Program. Her latest publication Uprooting Community: Japanese Mexicans, World War II and the U.S. - Mexico Borderlands, was awarded an International Latino Book Award, and the Southwest Book Award, in 2017. She is a doctoral candidate/ABD in the program in Sociocultural Foundations of Education Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.