The SKLAC Dissertation Prize committee recently met to review the submissions of scholars from around the world. We read dissertations on everything—from the environmental history of Mexican deserts to Latin American futurism/s to the role of museums in communicating the urgency of the Anthropocene. We would like to take a moment to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of all applicants.
We decided on the prize winner by taking into account the significance of the project as well as its methodology and writing style. In the end, we award the prize to Angélica Márquez-Osuna and her dissertation from Harvard University, “The Persistence of Beekeeping Knowledge in the Yucatan Peninsula, 1780-1950.”
Prize Committee member Dr. Lydia Crafts writes: “Angélica Márquez-Osuna wrote a gripping and beautifully written dissertation. Her careful and detailed work traces local expertise in beekeeping in the Yucatán from the pre-Columbian era to the present day. It highlights the persistence of Indigenous knowledge, resistance, and agency through the centuries.”
Written in an eloquent style, Dr. Márquez-Osuna investigates the history of apiculture in the Yucatan by understanding the science of bees and how Indigenous, Yucatecans, Afro-Yucatecans or mestizos became “active agents of environmental change by experimenting, innovating, and breeding new species of honeybees using the modern method of apiculture” (3). She traces how honey became big business, bringing in foreign companies that sought to introduce apiculture technologies to these rural communities. Yet, as Márquez-Osuna writes, the arrival of these new interests “complicate[s] the traditional/modern dichotomy in agricultural practices by identifying the complex social and economic forces that led to the technification of rural landscapes, its consequences in tropical America, and the aspect of innovation as a form of resistance” (5). Using archival records, scientific literature, and interviews conducted with Yucatecan beekeepers, the author weaves a history that captures the relationship between Indigenous innovation, non-humans, and the always-hungry agri-business.
Prize Committee member Dr. Heather Vrana adds, “Angélica Márquez-Osuna’s dissertation teaches us how Yucatecan Maya beekeepers innovated and adapted apicultura across the sweeping changes of the late eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. In a compelling narrative that highlights beekeeper resistance and local expertise, she deftly tracks the ecological, cultural, and economic importance of the Melipona beecheii (a stingless bee native to the Yucatán) and the Apis mellifera (a European native honeybee). By centering bees and their keepers, this dissertation challenges enduring dichotomies in the histories of science, technology, and medicine and animal studies, including tradition/modernity, local/global knowledge, and domestication/taming.”
All committee members look forward to reading this dissertation in book form! We are happy to award the SKLAC Dissertation Prize to Dr. Angélica Márquez-Osuna!
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