Ford Foundation Taps Grinnellian for Prestigious Fellowship

Joy Sales ʼ13 has been awarded a 2018 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship by the Fellowships Office of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship provides one year of support to complete a dissertation leading to a Ph.D. and is intended to support the final year of writing and defense of the dissertation.

Sales graduated with honors from Grinnell College with degrees in history and German. While at Grinnell, Sales was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, an experience she credits for inspiring her work as a scholar activist who aims to eradicate racial disparities in academia. Sales holds an M.A. in history from Northwestern University and is a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern.

Her dissertation, “Crossing Borders, Creating Solidarity: Transnational Activism and the Formation of the Filipino American Left, 1964-1990,” analyzes the intersections of progressive labor, student, and anti-dictatorship movements in the Filipino diaspora, and two-way exchange of ideas, strategies, and activists between the United States and the Philippines. This social history is grounded in archival sources in the U.S. and the Philippines, and 60 oral histories with Filipino, Filipino immigrant, and Filipino-American activists.

Sales returned to Grinnell College in the fall of 2016 as a visiting professor to teach a short course on Asian-American activism, sponsored by the Wilson Center and the Department of History.

Fellowships are awarded through a highly-competitive national competition administered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on behalf of the Ford Foundation. Fellows are selected on their superior academic achievement, their commitment to a career in teaching and research at the college and university level, their potential promise of future achievement as scholars and teachers, and as candidates who are well prepared to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.