New in Books: Memory & History

The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata: Myth, Memory, and Mexico's Twentieth Century

Samuel Brunk  

Race, Memory and History

"Racial slavery has shaped virtually every aspect of our nation's history. Slavery provided one of the essential legs upon which modern capitalism was built. Slavery shaped the development of the American political structure, from its peculiar form of federalism to the astonishing, and continuing, disproportional influence of Southern legislators. Today's various racial constructions--whiteness, blackness, and an Other category that persistently renders nonwhites and nonblacks invisible--are obviously rooted in the history of slavery and Jim Crow.

Enslaved Africans and their descendents were and are assigned the impossible role of maintaning stable American race relations. Slaves were instructed on pain of injury not to protest an unhealthy relationship fixed by whites for the benefit of whites. Remarkably, slaves did not obey. They managed to bring on the Civil War; in the process, they destroyed the system of slavery and delivered a more fully realized American democracy."

Robin D.G. Kelley, Foreword in "Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation"

Digital History/Historia

When I was an M.A. student studying Borderlands History, specifically the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, I often searched for a good resource that I could supplement several primary and secondary sources to teach a course on either the U.S-Mexico War or the history of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.

Digital History is a great online textbook that includes some appealing excerpts that could be used in the history classroom. The section on Mexican-Americans features excerpts from works ranging from the Spanish Borderlands to Selena. Digital History is the most organized and concise website that I would recommend to give students a sufficient introduction to the history/historia of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Texas/Tejas history, the U.S-Mexico War and the presence of Mexican-Americans/Chicanos/Latinos in pop cultura.

Memory & History

On March 1, Texas A&M University Press will publish historian, ethnographer and photographer Marie Theresa Hernández’s “Cemeteries of Ambivalent Desire: Unearthing Deep South Narratives from a Texas Graveyard,” an intricate history of the San Isidro Cemetery, which Hernández discovered was the site of a slave owning plantation before it was a burial site for Mexican/Mexican-American workers at the Imperial Sugar Company in Sugar Land, TX (which is located 20 miles southwest of Houston, Texas). According to the book description, Hernández used interviews, newspaper stories and other sources to construct a history that brings together Southern history and Mexican-American history. No doubt that Hernández’s monograph merits much attention in the field of memory/memory studies, as well as Chicana/o studies.

Black History Month in El Paso

Dr. Maceo Crenshaw Dailey Jr., Director of African American Studies, University of Texas El Paso

(photo courtesy of Dr. Dailey's website)

Listed below are events that will be held in El Paso/UTEP to celebrate Black History Month.

Feb. 5: Max Sherman, "The Political Life and Career of Barbara Jordan," 1: 30 p.m. at Liberal Arts Building, Room 210, UTEP.

Feb. 6: Film: "Lackawanna Blues," 6:45 p.m. at Union East, UTEP Union Cinema.

Feb. 11: Alvin Johnson, "Family Entrepreneurship: MACA /METI," 6:45 p.m. at Blumberg Reading Room, UTEP Library.More events, 2D

Feb. 11: "Jazz Night: A Taste of the Motherland," 7 p.m. at EPCC Transmountain Campus, Forum Theater.

Feb. 13: Film Showing: "Crash," 6:45 p.m. at UTEP Union East, Union Cinema.

Feb. 16: "Colors of Harmony: Fashion, Food and Fun," noon at EPCC Transmountain Campus, foyer.

Feb. 16: Maceo C. Dailey Jr., director of UTEP African-American Studies Program, "El Paso's Enduring African-American Community and its Place in African-American History," 1:30 p.m. at the El Paso Museum of History.

Feb. 16: Miss Black El Paso Pageant, 7 p.m., Chamizal National Memorial Theater.

Feb. 18: "Who's Who Among African American High-School Students," 7 p.m. at EPCC Administrative Services Center, 9050 Viscount.

Feb. 21: Gary Kieffner, "A History of Black Borderlands Motorcyclists" 6:30 p.m. at UTEP Union East, University Suite.

Feb. 23: Citywide Black History Month Parade and Celebration; begins at 10 a.m. at Pershing and Montana, and continues with festivities at 11 a.m. in Mary Webb Park.

Feb. 24: Sonia Sanchez, American poet and internationally acclaimed writer, "A Night of Poetry," 6:30 p.m. at Natural Gas Conference Center at UTEP.

Feb. 25: "Choir Night: A Message in Song," 7 p.m. at EPCC Transmountain Campus.

Feb. 27: Film: "The Great Debaters," (pending) 6:30 p.m. at Union Cinema at UTEP.

Feb. 28: Sandra Braham and Jonna Perillo, "Two Case Studies in African-American Education: El Paso and New York," 6:30 p.m. at Tomas Rivera Conference Room, UTEP Union East.

The Archive: Loci of Memoria

I was at Special Collections at the University of Texas El Paso today. It’s been awhile since I’ve been at an archive. It’s been about two years. After leaving the archive, I kept thinking about how the archive seems to be a place and space of neglect considering that students in Composition courses are not encouraged enough to begin or even to conduct research at an archive. Students are, instead, directed to internet databases where they type a simple keyword, search an article, print the article, read it and then weave it into their research paper. Seems practical for students who are just learning how to do research, right? However, I think it would be ideal to have students engage in hands-on research by working with primary documents they can search, examine, read, and analyze as individual markers of memory and as collective markers of memory about a particular point in time. In addition, it would be ideal to have students write about what information is stored in an archive. Most importantly, it would be ideal to have students answer why an archive has particular information over other information considering a certain body of knowledge’s relationship with time. Also, it would be beneficial for students to ask who visits archives and how an archive is constructed. Furthermore, it would be essential for students to understand some of the rules that govern the search and use of primary documents in a specialized space at a university library. All in all, I’m thinking of the archive as a place and space for memories. It is a significant domain of knowledge that is constructed in specific ways. No longer is the mind the tool from which the art of memory resides, but in the actual archive. The archive is the loci for memoria.

Memory and Monuments

Memory and Monuments: Commemorating and Confronting History on the U.S.-Mexico Border

This week, UTEP kicked off "Memory and Monuments: Commemorating and Confronting History on the U.S.-Mexico Border" (see hyperlink above), a series of presentations, exhibits and panel discussions on the significance of monuments in the history of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.

Muy interesante!

Me Acuerdo de Ti, Juana

Siempre me acuerdo de ti,

Juana.

La fe se convirtio en una carcel,

Juana.

Ahora eres libre,

Juana.

Y libre en mi memoria,

Juana