UWP’s Laura Hartmann-Villalta has been chosen for Inaugural 2025 JOTA Scholar-Artist Residency.
Laura Hartmann-Villalta is a feminist Latina whose academic scholarship focuses on visual Culture Studies, Women’s Studies, and early 20th century Anglophone Literature. Her research interests include interrogating dominant narratives of history from the viewpoints of those on the periphery. Fluent in Spanish with Costa Rican heritage, Hartmann-Villalta lived the first four years of her life in the Dominican Republic and Mexico and spent her entire undergraduate education studying in Madrid, Spain. She was a 2023 Jewtina y Co’s Puentes Leadership Fellow. Presently, she is a lecturer in the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University, where she teaches “Community-Engaged Writing: Latino/Jewish Intersections – Jewtina,” an upper-level writing course focused on meeting the writing and research needs of the non-profit Jewtina y Co while also introducing students to the history, culture, and traditions of Latin-Jews both in Latin America and in the United States.
JOTA’s Artist-Scholar Fellowship includes a Fall 2025 in-person Residency workshop at Brandeis University. The Residency is followed by a six-month period of monthly online meetings. The Fellowship will include an art exhibition in Spring 2026; a publication including images of the artwork or recordings and editorial essays by the scholars; and a publication in an academic journal of the field.
The theme of this year’s fellowship is Spine/Médula, with its dual significance as the encasement of the anatomical spinal cord and that which unites the pages of a book. Knowledge, and specifically books, have been at the center of the Jewish experience and embody the migration of peoples and their communal stories. In these tumultuous times, where meaning and identity seem constantly in question, our scholars and artists will address themes of identity, memory, and belonging through their unique professional lens. This topic encompasses, among others, the concepts of humanity, personal identity, transnationality, and bodies of knowledge.
By inviting scholars and artists of different disciplines to convene on this theme, JOTA intends to stimulate the dialogue and production of original works of scholarship and art that explicitly reflect on that which can be gained by a multi-disciplinary approach to an experiential workshop, whereby the academy and the art world engage in meaningful and collaborative new production.