Meet Joanmarie Bañez

Tell us a bit about your background I grew up in Hiram, Georgia, and later moved to Atlanta to pursue my B.A. and M.A. in English literary studies at Georgia State University. I kind of fell into graduate school because toward the end of my undergraduate studies, I’d realized I majored in the wrong concentration in order to become a high school teacher, which was my original goal. Graduating without the proper training would have meant extending my college education, pursuing an alternative career path, or a mixture of both: pursuing my master’s degree and ultimately finding a home in higher education. Graduate school has allowed me to teach and mentor students in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise imagined, and so there’s still a part of me that is living the dream my younger self originally sought.

What are you studying/researching? My research explores the relationship between family and the nation in contemporary narratives about Asian American and Pacific Islander adoptees, refugees, and migrant domestic workers in the U.S. South. My dissertation, "Southern Hostilities: Asian American and Pacific Islander Navigations through Hospitality, Guesthood, and the Gift of Freedom in the U.S. South," argues that how adoptees, refugees, and migrant domestic workers perform gratitude, indebtedness, and hospitality as conditions for belonging within the family reveals the conditions for belonging as subjects under U.S. empire. This work would not be possible without the support of my dissertation committee: Joo Ok Kim, Erin Suzuki, Katie Walkiewicz, Sara E. Johnson, and Yến Lê Espiritu.

Describe your involvement in the UC San Diego community. I have worked as a co-organizer and moderator for a symposium entitled “Honoring Indigenous Knowledge: Trans-Indigenous Futures” to celebrate Native American Heritage Month and to highlight the vitality of Indigenous arts and science to UCSD and the greater San Diego community. In working to center student voices for the UCSD Learning and Teaching for Justice Conference, I encouraged and mentored two of my former students to present their findings on the impacts of intersectional feminism to their fields as Asian American women in STEM. As panelists together, we contributed as equals alongside science and humanities faculty to highlight students’ diverse pedagogical needs within our classrooms.

Have you been awarded any fellowships or grants during graduate school? I've been fortunate to receive the James K. Binder Fellowship (2019-2021), the UCSD Literature Department Dissertation Year Fellowship (2023-2024), and the UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship (2024-2025). I am also a 2022 Summer Graduate Teaching Scholar, and my research has been supported by the Dean of Arts and Humanities Travel Fund Award, the Trudier Harris Graduate Student Travel Award for the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, and the Thurgood Marshall College Dimensions of Culture Professional Development Grant.

What has been your favorite part about your graduate student experience at UC San Diego? As a Filipina American, it’s been invaluable to learn, work, and teach among a diverse community of Asian American students and faculty. Over the years, I feel like I’ve been abundantly supported in the ways that matter most to me.