NEH selects UTEP Professor Zita Arocha as Summer Scholar

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced that The University of Texas at El Paso’s Zita Arocha, associate professor of practice in the Department of Communication, will be one of 30 NEH Summer Scholars to participate in a four-week study seminar at the University of Tampa in Florida.

Arocha, an award-winning bilingual journalist, will be part of the summer institute titled “José Martí and the Immigrant Communities of Florida in Cuban Independence and the Dawn of the American Century.”

The Center for José Martí Studies Affiliate will direct the program that will run from June 17 to July 12, 2019.

Marti, a journalist, poet and politician, was a Cuban revolutionary hero. Considered by some the father of the nation, he lived most of his life in exile to include at least a decade in New York City, where he published the pro-independence newspaper Patria.

Arocha said she planned to use her time as a scholar to study the role immigrant newspapers in Florida had in building public support for the cause of Cuban independence.