Haleigh Marcello is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the University of California, Irvine, with a graduate emphasis in Feminist Theory.
The UC Irvine Graduate Division announced the inaugural competition for the Graduate Scholar Success Fund for the 2023-2024 academic year and Marcello is the first-ever recipient. This scholarship is meant to provide support to graduate students who are first generation and demonstrate a clear financial need.
Get To Know Haleigh Marcello
Haleigh’s research interests broadly focus around the histories of gender, sexuality, and conservatism in the mid-to-late twentieth century United States. As a committed public historian and digital humanist, Haleigh has worked with UC Irvine’s Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center, the Black Panther Oakland Community School Project, the University of Houston’s Sharing Stories from 1977: The National Women’s Conference project, UCI’s “Nothing Less Than Justice”: California International Women’s Year project, and Orange County Parks to produce public-facing research and educational programs.
Inspired by her work in these endeavors, Haleigh founded the up-and-coming nonprofit California Queer History to translate her dissertation work on underexamined queer rights activism for the general public. Haleigh’s scholarship has been published in Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 and California History – with her latter coauthored article recently honored with the 2023 Richard J. Orsi Prize for the best article in the journal.
Haleigh is currently finishing up her dissertation on the influence of suburban space on gay rights activism in Orange County, California during the 1980s. She argues that Orange County’s reputation as a suburban utopia made it an important site of gay activism – if gay rights could be won in suburban, conservative Orange County, folks argued, they could be won anywhere. Gay bars standing their ground in Garden Grove, hate crime legislation in Laguna Beach, a Pride celebration in Santa Ana, and an antidiscrimination ordinance in Irvine were causes that were not only significant locally, but to which gay activists attached the future of their movement.
After earning her Ph.D., Haleigh hopes to continue working on public-facing history projects, including her own, California Queer History.
What This Fellowship Means
My parents always told me to never let anything get in the way of me achieving my dreams. Many things have tried – from more structural problems like being a first-generation college student to more direct adversaries, such as health issues. “Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve,” one of my favorite quotes, sits on a notepad on my desk as a reminder.
Nerve can only get you so far, though. As the head of an intergenerational household, I know that my passion for telling history can’t pay the bills, put gas in the car, or buy groceries. Nerve lets me work multiple jobs and side-hustles, but doesn’t take away the stress or the mountains of papers I have to grade. Nerve has me urging my decade-old laptop to turn on one more time so that I can submit a conference proposal, but can’t take me to the store to buy a new one.
Yet, nerve, drive, passion, and determination – they keep me going. I want to continue to tell underrepresented histories. I need to provide for my family. I really want to finish my Ph.D. The obstacles and challenges along the way – illnesses, bills, sleepless nights – they won’t stop me from doing what I love and taking care of who I love. Awards like this one, though – they keep me going in ways that nerve cannot. Putting a down payment to replace my laptop, making sure my car registration stays up to date, handling the copays at the doctor; these are real, material things this award has allowed me to do, so that I can accomplish my real, but less material, goals. Thank you for helping me fight on a little longer.