Recipients of the Martha Ross Memorial Prize
2023: Ariel Urim Chung
The Kitchen Project is an oral history project recording stories of diasporic Asian femme parents and children on their relationship to race, gender, food, and labor. The project director Ariel Urim Chung (Columbia University ’23) received the Martha Ross Prize, helping the project to move forward in experiment in oral history research in methodology and curation. Through the prize, Chung investigated new ways of listening, recording, and sounding oral history. The project had an installation “You are (not) Invited” in 2023 April. The project is now funded by the Brown Institute’s MAGIC Grant and supported by NYU’s A/P/A Institute, in its new installation in April, “You are (not) Invited II,” and launching of digital archive.
Photograph by Jayon Park
Find more information at www.arielurimchung.com
2021: Leo Valdes and Lucas Wilson
Leo Valdes, a PhD Student in History at Rutgers University, specializing in the history of race and ethnicity, social movements, and LGBTQ history. Their dissertation will be one of the few scholarly examinations of trans history especially unique for its focus on Black and Latinx trans communities. The Martha Ross Memorial Prize will enable Valdes to conduct and transcribe life course oral history interviews with New York/New Jersey trans activists and community members.
Lucas Wilson received the Martha Ross Prize for his queer oral-history project that explored gay men’s experiences as students at Liberty University, with a focus on their time in the school’s conversion-therapy program. He presented this work at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 2022. This project culminated in a book chapter, entitled “Guilt, Anxiety, and S(h)ame-Sex Attraction: The Affective Economies of Heteronormativity and Conversion ‘Therapy’ at Liberty University,” in American Examples: New Conversations about Religion, Volume Three, edited by Cody Musselman, Erik Kline, Dana Lloyd, and Michael J. Altman (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2024), pp. 123–145.
2020: Lucas Wilson
Lucas Wilson received the Martha Ross Prize for his queer oral-history project that explored gay men’s experiences as students at Liberty University, with a focus on their time in the school’s conversion-therapy program. He presented this work at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 2022. This project culminated in a book chapter, entitled “Guilt, Anxiety, and S(h)ame-Sex Attraction: The Affective Economies of Heteronormativity and Conversion ‘Therapy’ at Liberty University,” in American Examples: New Conversations about Religion, Volume Three, edited by Cody Musselman, Erik Kline, Dana Lloyd, and Michael J. Altman (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2024), pp. 123–145.
2019: Tammy Clemons
The “Youth Activism in Different Generations in Appalachia” (YAA) oral history project considers intergenerational experiences of and reflections on youth, gender, civic engagement and activism, and regional development in Appalachia. The YAA project is supported in part by a project grant and a transcription grant from the Kentucky Oral History Commission, and the collection currently includes 22 interviews with 20 participants and is archived at the University of Kentucky Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. The YAA project explores comparative perspectives on what it means to be young at different times and in different social contexts, and what people think is possible for young people in Appalachia.
Tammy Clemons is a PhD candidate in the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation research focuses on the cultural productions of young visual media makers in Central Appalachia and how they envision, construct, and act upon possibilities for young people in the region. Tammy is also a media artist/teacher with a critical interest in digital humanities and archives, and she is co-producer of “Remembering the Reedys: Appalachian Music, Migration, and Memory,” a multi-media documentary project that includes oral history interviews, archival recordings, and photos. To learn more about her projects, please visit: https://remembereedy.blogspot.com/