New Projects
Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative
Mapping Everyday Mexicana/Chicana Political Organizing in the Texas and Arizona Borderlands
This project examines the active participation of Mexican/Chicana women in politics. By centering the experiences of Mexican/Chicana women, our working group seeks to highlight the historical contributions of women’s grassroots organizing in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and Southern Arizona, in Tucson. We have been conducting oral histories with women to learn about their experiences in mobilizing and sustaining communities, from the late 1960s to 2010. A Digital Archive is forthcoming. Principal Investigators: Jennifer Najera (UC Riverside) Cristina Salinas (UT Arlington) Michelle Téllez (University of Arizona).
AfroChicanx Digital Humanities Project: Memories, Narratives, and Oppositional Consciousness of Black Diasporas
This is a community memory project and our goal is to preserve, amplify, and disseminate the histories and experiences of AfroMexican, AfroChicanxs, Blaxicans, and AfroHispanos in the Borderlands. Using digital humanities tools and oral history methods, we are working to create an AfroChicanx multimodal bilingual digital archive for undergraduate students, local and transnational communities, and academic departments. Principal Investigators are Dr. Dora Careaga (University of New Mexico), Dr. Micaela Diaz-Sanchez (UC Santa Barbara) and Dr. Michelle Téllez (University of Arizona).
Arizona Youth Identity Study
Using mixed qualitative methods in five communities in Arizona, our project focuses on who, how, where and why U.S.-born young adults of diverse backgrounds reimagine, reclaim, rearticulate, and reconstitute national belonging in the midst of the nativist wave sweeping the country as we head to the national elections. We center our project on three interrelated aims to understand how an increasingly nativist climate: (1) affects Latinx, Native American and white young adult's definition of who is American, (2) shapes their sense of national identity and belonging, and (3) motivates them to engage civically and politically to support or challenge this narrow conceptualization of Americanism.
Project Leads: Nilda Flores-Gonzalez (Arizona State University - ASU), Angela Gonzales (ASU) Michelle Pasco (ASU), Emir Estrada (ASU), Annabelle Atkins (ASU), Michelle Téllez (University of Arizona)
Mujeres de Manzo Documentary
Our film profiles the work of four longtime Chicana feminist activists at the forefront of immigration rights organizing here in Southern Arizona: Isabel Garcia, Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, Guadalupe Castillo, and Margo Cowan.
Garcia, Rubio-Goldsmith, Castillo and Cowen first worked together in the early 1970s on the Manzo Area Council, a war on poverty program begun by President Johnson, and became known as Las Mujeres de Manzo. In the '80s the group was the lone voice identifying and opposing the militarization of the border. They went on to shape many other humanitarian relief groups including Coalición de Derechos Humanos and No More Deaths, and to be actively involved in the Sanctuary Movement. Their collective efforts have given rise to many of the international human rights activities in our region and beyond as their work has had national and international implications. They are currently spearheading the Justice for All campaign for a ballot initiative that would provide public defense attorneys for people facing charges in Pima County's Immigration Court.
The film will interweave interviews and archival material with observational footage of the JFA campaign to be filmed over the next two years. This is an urgent moment to make a film on the long history of border activism, sanctuary, detention/deportation, and human rights.
Producers: Beverly Seckinger, Michelle Téllez, Ana Cornide, Trayce Peterson