Jack Cáraves, assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies at UC Riverside, has been awarded a 2026-27 Career Enhancement Fellowship by the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.
The yearlong fellowship, which is funded by the Mellon Foundation, includes a stipend of $35,000 as well as $1,500, which can be used for research, travel, or publication expenses.
Cáraves will be on leave from UCR over the coming academic year, when he plans to finish the manuscript for his first book, which is under contract with Duke University Press. The working title is “Trans Power: Illegality, Self-Determination, and Spiritual Activism in Trans Latinx Los Angeles.”
“Receiving this fellowship feels especially meaningful because my scholarly work has always been rooted in the communities and experiences that first taught me to see the world critically,” said Cáraves, who earned a doctoral degree in Chicana/o and Central American studies at UCLA. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to dedicate this year to completing ‘Trans Power’ and to continue building scholarship that centers trans and immigrant communities while imagining more just and liberatory futures.”
The book will explore how transgender Latino people who have experienced rejection, displacement, and marginalization create lives of meaning, belonging, and possibility, Cáraves said.
“Ultimately, the book asks how people who have been pushed to the margins make worlds in which they can not only survive, but belong and thrive,” he said.