Contact
Biography
My third monograph, Scarred Landscapes: Place, Trauma, and Memory in Caribbean Latinx Art (University of Arizona Press, 2025) won the silver medal for Best Arts Book at the 2026 International Latino Book Awards. The book documents the importance of relational memory in the work of ten Caribbean Latinx artists in New York City from the 1970s through the present. It examines how Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican diaspora artists envision alternative modes of belonging in difference and solidarity with others by tying colonial trauma to contemporary diasporic unbelonging and the archipelagos of New York and the Caribbean to the rest of the globe.
I am also working on a fourth monograph (under contract with the University of New Mexico Press) about the life and work of contemporary Chicana-Latina photographer and printmaker Delilah Montoya. The book examines Montoya's relationship to Chicanx, Latinx, and US American art worlds, her participation in community-based activist organisations, and her experimentation with photographic histories and genres, printmaking, installation, film, and digital art since the 1970s.
My first monograph Race, Place, and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles: A Transnational Perspective, 1890-1940 (University of Arizona Press, 2009) examined the impact of reform policy on Mexican immigrant and second-generation Mexican American communities in Greater Los Angeles. The book highlights the shifting boundaries of race and citizenship in the Progressive and New Deal eras. In particular, it assesses the significance of reform for shaping processes of acculturation and racialisation. It also explores the impact of reform in generating new patterns of cross-border and second-generation activism.
My second monograph, A Contested Art: Modernism and Mestizaje in New Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015) won the 2016 British Association for American Studies Annual Book Prize. The research was supported by a Clements Center Research Fellowship for the 糖心原创 of the Southwest and an Early Career Research Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The book examines transformations in early twentieth-century Hispano art. Responding to the pressures of modernity, patronage, and new aesthetic dictates brought by Anglo American arrivals, Hispano artists experimented with colonial art forms and modernist trends in painting, photography, and sculpture. As they drew on native and non-native sources of inspiration, Hispanos generated alternative lines of modernist innovation and creativity. These lines expressed their cultural and ethnic affiliations with local Native peoples and with Mexico, and a vision of New Mexico as a place shaped by the modernity, cultural conflict and exchange.
I am also the Principal Investigator on two AHRC Impact Acceleration Account-funded projects that involve partnering with Nottingham City Museums and Galleries to learn more about their Indigenous North American Collection:
a) Mapping the Indigenous North American Collection with Nottingham City Museums and Galleries (2025-26) to create a more accessible collection archive, support research on identification, provenance and donors, and develop an ethical approach to working with the collection.
b) Reconnecting Stories: Pueblo, Plains and Woodlands Designs in Nottingham Museum's Indigenous North American Collection (2026-) to explore how beadwork and pottery designs relate to Indigenous knowledge systems and to map connections between historic and contemporary Indigenous arts.
I would be happy to support students working in these general areas: race, ethnicity and immigration; the history and culture of Latinxs in the United States, and especially contemporary Latinx visual culture. My research has relevance for students working on borderlands history and culture and for those taking a transnational and hemispheric approach to American Studies.
I have won the following national and international awards:
Silver Medal for Best Arts Book at the International Latino Book Awards (2026)
Winner of the British Association for American Studies Annual Book Prize (2016)
Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Research Fellowship (2012)
Academic Workshop and Symposium Grant, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, to organise 'Art Across Frontiers' (2011)
Research Fellowship from the Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas (2010)
Teaching Summary
Taught modules
Immigration and Ethnicity in the United States: A survey of immigration to the United States from Europe, Asia and Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present day, with an emphasis on the making of immigrant communities, cultures and identities.
Latinx Cultures: An interdisciplinary survey of Latinx cultural expression from the colonial period to the present, focusing on the genres, forms and sites involved in the production and consumption of Latinx culture: art, architecture, music, testimony, fiction, performance, and religious expression; tourism, heritage, museum and media industries; elite, popular, and everyday cultural expressions.
The Latinx Cultures module stemmed directly from my research on Hispano artists in New Mexico, 1930-1960, and my ongoing intellectual engagement with Latinx cultural politics, particularly in the realm of visual culture. I believe that good research feeds good teaching and vice versa. My current research expertise has generated new opportunities in teaching, in particular by changing the methods I use in the seminar context. In turn, teaching students using new source materials drawn from this project has undoubtedly helped me test, refine and widen my research expertise.
I have participated regularly in centrally-run widening participation events. I consider the dissemination of staff research expertise and teaching practice an integral aspect of our role as academics and fundamental to the University's engagement with the wider community.
Research Summary
My third monograph, Scarred Landscapes: Place, Trauma, and Memory in Caribbean Latinx Art (University of Arizona Press, 2025) won the silver medal for Best Arts Book at the 2026 International Latino… read more
Selected Publications
STEPHANIE LEWTHWAITE, 2019. . In: DIRK G脰TTSCHE, ed., Memory and Postcolonial Studies: Synergies and New Directions Volume 9. Peter Lang. 187-213
STEPHANIE LEWTHWAITE, 2018. Conclusion. In: ALBERTO REY, ed., Extinct Birds Project Canadaway Press, Fredonia, New York. 172-180
STEPHANIE LEWTHWAITE, 2017. Journal of American Studies. 51(2), 591-621
STEPHANIE LEWTHWAITE, 2016. Revising the Archive: Documentary Portraiture in the Photography of Delilah Montoya. In: FREDERICK LUIS ALDAMA, ed., The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Popular Culture Routledge. 226-236
Current Research
My third monograph, Scarred Landscapes: Place, Trauma, and Memory in Caribbean Latinx Art (University of Arizona Press, 2025) won the silver medal for Best Arts Book at the 2026 International Latino Book Awards. The book documents the importance of relational memory in the work of ten Caribbean Latinx artists in New York City from the 1970s through the present. It examines how Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican diaspora artists envision alternative modes of belonging in difference and solidarity with others by tying colonial trauma to contemporary diasporic unbelonging and the archipelagos of New York and the Caribbean to the rest of the globe.
I am also working on a fourth monograph (under contract with the University of New Mexico Press) about the life and work of contemporary Chicana-Latina photographer and printmaker Delilah Montoya. The book examines Montoya's relationship to Chicanx, Latinx, and US American art worlds, her participation in community-based activist organisations, and experimentation with photographic histories and genres, printmaking, multimedia installation, film, and digital art since the 1970s.
I am also the Principal Investigator on two AHRC Impact Acceleration Account-funded projects that involve partnering with Nottingham City Museums and Galleries to learn more about their Indigenous North American Collection:
a) Mapping the Indigenous North American Collection with Nottingham City Museums and Galleries (2025-26) to create a more accessible collection archive, support research on identification, provenance and donors, and develop an ethical approach to working with the collection.
b) Reconnecting Stories: Pueblo, Plains and Woodlands Designs in Nottingham Museum's Indigenous North American Collection (2026-) to explore how beadwork and pottery designs relate to Indigenous knowledge systems and to map connections between historic and contemporary Indigenous arts.
Past Research
My past research includes two monographs. The first, entitled Race, Place, and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles: A Transnational Perspective, 1890-1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009), examined the impact of reform policy and ideology on Mexican immigrant and second-generation Mexican American communities in the rural, urban and suburban territories of Greater Los Angeles. The book highlights the shifting boundaries of race and citizenship in the Progressive and New Deal eras, assessing the significance of reform in shaping acculturation, racialisation and new patterns of cross-border and second-generation activism.
My second book, A Contested Art: Modernism and Mestizaje in New Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2015 ) won the 2016 British Association for American Studies Annual Book Prize. The research for the book was supported by a Clements Center Research Fellowship for the 糖心原创 of the Southwest and an Early Career Research Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The book examined the encounter between Spanish-speaking Hispanos and Anglo-American writers and artists in the early twentieth century. Anglos who came in search of new personal and aesthetic freedoms found inspiration for their modernist ventures in Hispano art forms. When they elevated a particular model of Spanish colonial art in preservationist circles and the marketplace, practising Hispano artists found themselves working under a new set of patronage relationships and aesthetic expectations that tied their art to a static vision of the Spanish colonial past. A Contested Art examines Hispano responses to these aesthetic dictates, suggesting that cultural encounter and appropriation produced conflict and loss, but also new transformations in Hispano art. Hispano artists experimented with colonial art forms and modernist trends in painting, photography, and sculpture. As they drew on native and non-native sources of inspiration, Hispano artists generated alternative lines of modernist innovation and mestizo creativity. These lines expressed their cultural and ethnic affiliations with local Native peoples and with Mexico, and a vision of New Mexico as a place shaped by the fissures of modernity and the dynamics of cultural conflict and exchange.
I have won the following national and international awards:
Silver Medal for Best Arts Book at the International Latino Book Awards (2026)
Winner of the British Association for American Studies Annual Book Prize (2016)
Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Research Fellowship (2012)
Academic Workshop and Symposium Grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, for the symposium 'Art Across Frontiers' (2011)
Research Fellowship from the Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas (2010)
Future Research
Chicanx and Latinx visual cultures with a focus on decoloniality, the environment, histories of walking and interspecies kinship.