Maria Chi-Chable
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Bio & Research Interests
Maria Chi-Chable (she/her/leti’) is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, where she is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Fellowship. She was born and raised in San Rafael, California, and is a proud daughter of Maya immigrant parents from Peto, Yucatán. Maria graduated as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow from Wellesley College in 2023 with a B.A in Women’s and Gender Studies and a concentration in representations, media, and race.
Her current research interests include Indigeneity in Latin America, Indigenous language revitalization, visual culture, and knowledge production in sound. Specifically, her interests are situated at the intersection of Maya identity, visual sovereignty, and Indigenous language revitalization within the context of the growing community of Maya rappers in the Yucatán Peninsula and San Francisco, California. When not working on her research, she enjoys visiting her family in the Bay, playing with her two dogs, and learning new words in Maya (Maayat’aan).