March, 2020

Tuesday, March 03, 2020 | 03:00 pm

Car Trunk: A Multimodal Migration

Melisa Garcia

"Car Trunk: a Multimodal Migration" is an exhibition of the reconstruction of the car trunk that Melisa’s mother, as a young child, migrated to the United States inside of. The installation utilizes multimodality, testimonio, art, and storytelling to reconstruct the memory and experience of her journey to the United States in the late 1970’s when she escaped the civil war in El Salvador with her mother and two sisters. The nature of the art project is so that through the model of the testimonio others are able to also interact, engage with the art pieces at a technological intimacy. This means that participants will be able to read about the emotional, political, and traumatic history of El Salvador through QR codes that will be on the car trunk. As well, social media will be utilized to have the participants experience surpass the installation state and reach others.


Wednesday, March 04, 2020 | 02:00 pm

LAII Lecture Series: Fideicomiso Archivos Plutarco Elias Calles y Fernando Torreblanca Digital Collection

Fátima Del Angel Guevara

Join the LAII for a presentation on The University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research Fideicomiso Archivos Plutarco Elias Calles y Fernando Torreblanca Digital Collection. The collection is is part of a collaborative preservation and access project designed to create, secure and provide open access through New Mexico Digital Collections to digital surrogates of documents held physically at the FAPECFT in Mexico City.


Thursday, March 12, 2020 | 02:00 pm - 03:30 pm

Musicology Colloquium Series: Arab Musicking on the US Mexico Border

Dr, Andrea Shaheen Espinosa , University of Texas, El Paso

This talk explores the relationship between trauma and identity by examining Arab music performance on the U.S.–Mexico border. Drawing on the musicking of Syrian and Mexican migrant communities, I interrogate theories of cultural and psychological trauma and borderland epistemologies to explore how border tensions influence the often-fraught views of identity.