Princeton senior Emily Sánchez has been awarded a fellowship from ReachOut 56-81-06, an alumni-funded effort that supports year-long public service projects after graduation. Sánchez will develop a podcast series on the history of Latino communities across New Jersey.
Emily Sánchez. Photo by Jacquelyn Davila
The project, “Podcasting History: An Opportunity to Bring Latino Voices Inside New Jersey’s History Classrooms,” will be designed to diversify voices within secondary school history curricula and to support teachers in covering learning objectives required by the New Jersey Social Studies Learning Standards. Sánchez will work with the New Jersey Hispanic Research Information Center at the Newark Public Library.
ReachOut will provide a stipend of $35,000 to pay for living expenses during her fellowship year.
Sánchez, a history concentrator pursuing certificates in Latino studies and Latin American studies, grew up in Clifton and Paterson, New Jersey. She was inspired to design the podcast project due to a lack of representation of her own Peruvian-American community in her secondary school history curriculum and in library archives.
“I’m a first-generation Peruvian-American,” Sánchez said. “My mother (from the Cajamarca region of Perú) immigrated to New Jersey in the 1990s and my father (from the Ancash region) in the late 1980s. I grew up in a predominantly Latino neighborhood, and always felt very connected to my Peruvian heritage due to the strong Peruvian community in Passaic County.”
Although the podcasts will be designed with secondary school students in mind, the series will be available through the Newark Public Library and New Jersey Hispanic Research Information Center so the history of Latin American migrant communities in New Jersey is accessible to more audiences.
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