Parker Hatley Awarded 2024-2025 USC Shoah Foundation Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies

Parker Hatley, PhD candidate in Anthropology and Critical Media Practice at Harvard University, has been awarded the 2024-2025 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies. He will be in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research for a month during the Spring 2025 semester to pursue research for his dissertation entitled “After the Finca, in Spite of the War: The Promises and Pitfalls of Community in Highland Guatemala.”

During his time at the Center, Hatley will explore the testimonies of Guatemalan genocide survivors in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) to examine the complex relationships between coffee plantations, the military, guerilla groups, and local Indigenous communities. In two chapters of his dissertation, he is focusing on La Perla, Guatemala’s most well-known coffee plantation, and its critical role in the unfolding of the Guatemalan Civil War (1976-83) and the genocide against the Indigenous Ixil Maya people. His research with the survivor testimonies collected by the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) will complement extensive fieldwork and archival research he has conducted in Guatemala from 2020 to 2023.

Hatley earned a B.A. in Anthropology with a concentration in Latin American and Iberian Studies from Bard College in New York and completed a post-baccalaureate fellowship with the Al-Quds Bard Honors College. He has earned several grants and fellowships, including the Fulbright García-Robles Scholarship, Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship, and funding from the Film Study Center at Harvard. In addition to his dissertation work, Hatley is in the process of creating two documentary films based on his fieldwork experiences. His dissertation research and filmmaking focus on plantation labor, caste, insurgency, historical memory, and emigration in the Quiché Department of Guatemala.

Hatley has extensive teaching experience, has served as editor of the Book Forum in Anthropology of Work Review, and edited the recently-published book Peter Warshall: Squirrels on Earth and Stars Above (Edition Hors-Sujet, 2024), the first published collection of the essays and lectures of the late Maniacal Naturalist Peter Warshall (1943-2013). In his undergraduate career, Hatley worked for two years as part of the Bard Prison Initiative, providing weekly one-on-one tutorial assistance in writing to inmates at Coxsackie Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison.

The USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies is awarded annually by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research to an outstanding advanced-standing Ph.D. candidate from any discipline for dissertation research focused on testimony from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and related unique USC research resources. The fellowship enables the recipient to spend one month in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research during the academic year and to deliver a public lecture about his or her research. The fellowship is named after long-time volunteer and former USC Shoah Foundation Board of Councilors Chair Robert J. Katz in recognition of his service to the USC Shoah Foundation. Read about previous Katz Research Fellows in Genocide Studies here.