María Elizabeth Rodríguez Beltrán is a PhD candidate in the Program in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her research focuses on definitions of blackness in Afro-diasporic literature in the Caribbean and Brazil. Before attending Rutgers, María Elizabeth earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Classical Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY) Hunter College.
She is a 2017–2021 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow and a 2019 summer Mellon grant awardee. She has also been recognized by multiple organizations and institutes, including the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, the Rutgers Predoctoral Leadership Development Academy, the American Antiquarian Society CHAViC Summer Seminar, the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, and the CUNY Pipeline Program at the Graduate Center.
In addition to her scholarly work, María Elizabeth devotes time translating documents from English to Spanish and vice versa for different community organizations in New York City and New Jersey, and mentors young Latinx students in the process of applying for college and financial aid. Her own experience of immigrating from the Dominican Republic as an adolescent informs her commitment to diversity and equality within academia.
She currently works as an advisor at GradFund, the Rutgers University office for graduate student advising for external funding opportunities, where she helps graduate students from different fields to identify and apply for merit-based research grants and fellowships and also works as the program’s editor of the blog and social media outlets.
You can also find her on LinkedIn under Maria Elizabeth Roldan.