At my desk

Author: Shaylee Luedders | Major: History, International & Global Studies | Semester: Spring 2025

I’m Shaylee, and I received a SURF grant to conduct research in Spring 2025. I just graduated from Fulbright College with Bachelor of Arts degrees in History and International and Global Studies, and I’ll be returning to the U of A in the Fall to finish a Master’s in History as part of our accelerated 4+1 Master’s program. My mentor was Dr. Shawn Austin, an Associate Professor in the History Department who focuses on colonial and indigenous Latin America. My project, which was also my honors thesis, is entitled “Imagining Indigeneity: The Construction of the Indio in the Work of José Carlos Mariátegui,” and in it I explore how José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930), recognized as Latin America’s first Marxist, portrayed indigenous people in his writing. I argue through textual analysis that he developed an “imagined Indian” in his literature about Peruvian identity, modernization, and Marxism.
The foundations of this project were laid in the summer of 2023 when I studied abroad in Cusco, Peru. I initially didn’t connect my need for a research topic to this trip, as I was originally motivated to go south by a desire to improve my language skills. However, watching the Inti Raymi festival and the celebration of Corpus Christi, talking with locals, and experiencing the culture of the Andes mountains pushed me to focus my research on Latin America. I’d taken a few classes with Dr. Austin previously and knew he worked in the region, so I met with him to talk through my interests. Hearing I wanted to write about nationalism, intellectual history, and Latin America, he pointed me to the indigenismo movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From there, I began to familiarize myself with the topic through research and lots of reading. Dr. Austin advised me from the beginning to start writing, regardless of where I was at, and by processing information on the page I gradually approached a thesis I felt good about arguing. I met with him on a consistent basis, especially during the final Spring semester, to keep myself accountable and make sure I was on the right track.
I encountered the usual challenges of writing a thesis: I’d never written something of the length I wanted to reach, I procrastinated, and there were periods of uncertainty about my topic and methods. I dealt with these by committing to continuing, talking through my concerns with Dr. Austin, and commiserating with friends who were going through the same things. There were several challenges unique to my specific project. It’s difficult to do primary source research in a second language—especially when accessing archives inherently entails several flights. As a result, I had to pin down an argument I could make with the limited published, translated primary sources that already existed. I also didn’t pick up my topic from an existing class paper, so I was starting from scratch when it came to my background knowledge—that was an especially tough barrier to entry for me, but I gradually came to understand the field by continuing to read and research through the confusion.
This project taught me so much about researching and writing. There’s plenty about my thesis that I’m not in love with now, but I’m still proud of it and am glad I stuck with it—I had to learn how to work on a larger project like this by actually just doing it. SURF gave me the freedom to focus on my research and get as much as I could out of the experience. It also pushed
me to present at a conference. Phi Alpha Theta is the largest history honors society in the U.S., and they put on several regional conferences every year; this year, the Arkansas-Tennessee conference was held online, and I presented at it as part of a panel on indigenous history. I found it to be a really helpful, low-stakes introduction to presenting my research to a totally unfamiliar audience. My next step is starting work on my Master’s thesis, and after I graduate in Spring 2026 I hope to get a Fulbright to teach English in Latin America.