Faculty selection committees in the RITM Center congratulate the 2023 winners of the Henry K. Hayase Prize and the Carlos R. Moreno Award. 

Established in 1988, the Henry K. Hayase Prize is awarded annually to the best student paper or senior essay dealing with a topic relating to Asian American experiences in the United States.

Established in the fall of 2009, the Justice Carlos R. Moreno Prize is awarded annually to the best senior essay focusing on the field of Latinx Studies, or on the Latinx experience in the United States.

Citations for award winners are included below.

2023 Henry Hayase Prize Awardee

Hannah Shi, History of Science, Public Health, and Medicine | Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology

Opening a Can of Worms: Hookworm Science, Medical Exclusion, and Public Health in the United States at the Turn of the 20th Century

This incisive essay explores a significant chapter of public health history in which anti-Asian threat narratives crystalized in campaigns to eradicate hookworm in the early twentieth century. Through remarkable archival research and critical analysis, Shi demonstrates how eugenics and racial exclusion entwined in the identification of parasitical infection with Chinese and Indian populations. Elegantly presented, well-written, and persuasive, Shi makes full use of her sources to depict the collaborative efforts of scientists, medical providers, and immigration agents to define Asians as a pathogenic presence and establish new codes for achieving “race immunity.” The essay makes thoughtful connections to the long-lasting legacies of exclusion policies and racism in the scapegoating of Asian populations during periods of public health concern.

Advisor: Mary Lui, Professor of History, American Studies, and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration

College: Timothy Dwight

2023 Carlos Moreno Awardees

Karla Camacho, Ethnicity, Race, and Migration

Learning at the Borderlands:  Transfronterizo Education at the Matamoros, Tamaulipas-Cameron County, Texas Border, 1920s

This terrific essay provides an exciting, new analysis of transfronterizo education in Matamoros, Tamaulipas and Cameron County, Texas. Relying on archival sources in both the United States and Mexico, Camacho brings four case studies to light that reframe scholarly understandings of public education, national identity, masculinity, and other topics in the early- and mid-twentieth centuries. The author combines impressive archival research in Spanish and English with close readings of secondary literature on the US-Mexico borderlands, on public education, on immigrant communities, and on Mexican politics. The result is a rich narrative that tracks the perspectives of policymakers, educators, school children, and parents, and that shows how Mexican-descent communities engaged and defied national boundaries to navigate changing regional dynamics.

Advisor: Stephen Pitti, Professor of History, American Studies, and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration

College: Trumbull College

Olivia Genao, History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health, Sociology

A Movement on the Margins: Obscured Histories of Chicana Health Activism in the American Southwest, 1967-1980

This excellent essay on Chicana health activism in California connects two fields that remain understudied: Histories of medicine and healthcare in the U.S., and scholarship in Latinx studies. Focusing on the 1970s, Genao's work weaves together an analysis of published research on healthcare activism and engages an exciting range of primary sources, including oral histories, newspapers, flyers, and other archival documents. It challenges male-centric memories of 1970s politics by proposing new methodologies that recognize non-conventional (and more anonymous) forms of political participation and power. By illustrating the importance of community participation in healthcare debates, the author draws attention to key political mobilizations, educational efforts, and formal advocacy programs, thereby significantly expanding our understanding of this important history.

Advisor: Ximena Lopez Carrillo, Ethnicity, Race and Migration

College: Pierson College