Adela C. Licona is an Associate Professor of English, the Director of the Institute for LGBT Studies, and Vice Chair of Social, Cultural, Critical Theory Graduate Minor at the University of Arizona. Her research and teaching interests include cultural, ethnic, race, gender, and sexuality studies, non/dominant rhetorics, action-oriented research, borderlands studies, space and visual culture. Licona is the author of Zines In Third Space: Radical Cooperation and Borderlands Rhetoric (SUNY Press, 2012) and co-editor of Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward (JHUP, 2009). She has published in such journals as Antipode, Transformations, Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, and Critical Studies in Media Communication. She co-founded Feminist Action Research in Rhetoric (FARR), a group of progressive feminist scholars committed to public scholarship and community dialogue and the Crossroads Collaborative, a think-and-act research, writing, and teaching collective for which she was the recipient of a Ford Foundation gran. Adela serves on the editorial and advisory boards for Feminist Formations, Women’s Studies in Communication, QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, Spoken Futures and the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam, and for the Ohio State University Press’ exciting new book series Intersectional Rhetorics.
Alfred J. Quiroz is an artist based in Tucson, Arizona. His work focuses on social politics, border issues, and history utilized as satire and is in several private collections, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. He has also taken part in numerous cross-border collaborations, including a seven-year long project with the Mexican artist group Grupo Yonke.
Alina Peña Iguarán is a full-time Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociocultural Studies and the Cultural Promotion Center at ITESO (Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente). Her research interests include Hispano-American culture and literature. Iguarán has taught at New York University, City University of New York, Montclair State University, and Boston University. She has published in such journals as The Latin Americanist and Universidad. Iguarán has worked with NGOs designing educational programs for undocumented Mexican migrants. Iguarán was the recipient of an “Excellence in Teaching” award from Boston University’s School of Arts and Sciences and was awarded first prize in 2010 in the Nellie Campobello National Essay Contest in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
Cognate Collective is an arts collective based in the California-Mexico borderlands that develops research projects, public interventions, and experimental teaching programs to analyze social, economic, and cultural flows across the border. Their site-specific projects explore borderlands themes like migration, informal economies, and the construction of collective identities through popular cultural in order to examine the transnational communities that borders produce. They currently work between Tijuana, Mexico, Mexicali, Mexico, Santa Ana, California, and Los Angeles, California.
David Taylor is a photographer based out of Tucson, Arizona. He earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. His photographs, multimedia installations, and artist’s books have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions at venues that include the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The New Mexico Museum of Art and the El Paso Museum of Art. Taylor’s work is in the permanent collections of, Fidelity Investments, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum among others. The New Yorker blog, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Orion Magazine, PREFIX PHOTO, Fraction Magazine and the Mexico/Latin America Edition of Esquire Magazine have all featured his images. Taylor’s ongoing examination of the U.S. Mexico border was supported by a 2008 Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His monograph “Working the Line” was published by Radius Books in 2010 and has received numerous “best book” and design excellence awards.
Diana Taylor is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at NYU, and the 2017 President of the Modern Language Association. She is the author of Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America (1991), which won the Best Book Award given by New England Council on Latin American Studies and Honorable Mention in the Joe E. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama; of Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’, Duke U.P., 1997; and The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Duke U.P., 2003), which won the ATHE Research Award in Theatre Practice and Pedagogy and the Modern Language Association Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for the best book in Latin American and Spanish Literatures and Culture (2004). The Archive and the Repertoire has been translated into Portuguese by Eliana Lourenço de Lima Reis (Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2012) and Spanish by Anabelle Contreras (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2015.) She published PERFORMANCE (Buenos Aires: Asuntos Impresos, 2012), a new revised version in English with Duke U.P. 2016; and Acciones de memoria: Performance, historia, y trauma, Peru: Fondo Editorial de la Asamblea Nacional de Rectores (2012). She is co-editor of Estudios avanzados de Performance (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2011), Stages of Conflict: A Reader in Latin American Theatre and Performance (Michigan U. P., 2008), Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform (Duke U.P.,2004), Defiant Acts/Actos Desafiantes: Four Plays by Diana Raznovich (Bucknell U. P., 2002),Negotiating Performance in Latin/o America: Gender, Sexuality and Theatricality (Duke U.P., 1994), and The Politics of Motherhood: Activists from Left to Right, (University Press of New England, 1997). Taylor is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship, 2013-14. She is Vice President of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and will be President in 2017. Diana Taylor is founding Director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, funded by the Ford, Mellon, Rockefeller, Rockefeller Brothers and Henry Luce Foundations.
Kency Cornejo is Assistant Professor of Modern/Contemporary Latin American Art at University of New Mexico. Cornejo’s research and teaching interests center on the intersection between race, gender and coloniality and the resulting decolonial methodologies, visualities and gestures in art. Cornejo is currently working on her first book manuscript, Visual Disobedience: The Geopolitics of Experimental Art in Central America, 1990-Present. Her publications include “The Question of Central American-Americans in Latino Art and Pedagogy” for Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies; “No Text without Context: Habacuc Guillermo Vargas’s Exposition #1” for Art and Documentation/Sztuka i Dokumentacja; and “Indigeneity and Decolonial Seeing in Contemporary Art of Guatemala” for FUSE Magazine. Cornejo is a recipient of the Fulbright-Hays DDRA and the Ford Dissertation Fellowship, among others.
Lisa Magaña is the Interim Director and Professor at the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. Her areas of research include immigration, Latino politics and Latino public policy issues. Magaña is finalizing revisions on her manuscript From A to Z, Latino Politics and Immigration in Arizona. She is the author of Straddling the Border (U. Texas P., 2003), Mexican Americans and the Politics of Diversity: ¡Querer es poder! (U. Arizona P., 2005), co-editor with Erik Lee of Latino Politics and Arizona’s Immigration Law SB 1070 (Springer Press, 2003), and author of a textbook entitled Arizona, Immigration, Latinos and Politics (Kendall Hunt, 2014). She has also published in the Journal of American Ethnic History, Atzlan, American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Social Psychology, and Latino Studies Journal, among others. She has been interviewed on NPR, the BBC, PBS, Associated Press, MSNBC and other media outlets. Magaña is the only recipient of the Manuel Servin Facult Award to be be recognized twice by ASU’s Chicano Latino Faculty and Staff (CLFSA) for her exemplary teaching and research.
Marcos Ramírez ERRE is an artist based out of Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. He has a law degree in the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. He immigrated to the United States in 1983, where he worked for 17 years in the construction industry. In 1989, while still working in the construction sector, he became active in the field of visual arts. Since then he has participated in residencies, lectures and different individual and collective exhibitions in countries like Mexico, USA, Canada, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Russia China, France, Spain, Portugal, Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Chile, Argentina, y Brazil, and in major exhibitions, such InSite94, InSite97, the VI and VII Havana Biennials, the Whitney Biennial 2000, the second Moscow Biennial, the San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial, the 2007 Sao Paulo /Valencia Biennial, the California Biennial 08, the Zero One Biennial, The Site Santa Fe Biennial ,Made in California, Mexico Illuminated, From Baja to Vancouver, “Politica de la Diferencia, Arte Iberoamericano de fin de siglo”, Human/Nature, and ECO Contemporary Mexican Art, in the Centro Reina Sofia Museum in Spain, among others. In 2007, he received a United States Artist fellowship. He has also been a fellow member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators since 2009.
Margarita Cabrera is a Mexican-American artist based in El Paso, Texas whose work focuses on border relations, labor practices, and immigration. Cabrera’s artwork explores the impact of NAFTA on labor relations by manufacturing soft sculptures of goods that are exchanged across the U.S.-Mexico border (e.g., automobiles and household appliances). Her work has been exhibited at the Talley Dunn Gallery in Dallas, Texas, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles, California, the Meltzer Gallery in New York, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, Texas.
Michelle Téllez is Assistant Professor of Mexican American Studies at University of Arizona. Téllez’s research and teaching centers on identity, transnational community formation, cross-border labor organizing, gendered migration, autonomy and resistance along the U.S./Mexico border. She has published in several book anthologies, and in journals such as Gender & Society, Feminist Formations, Aztlán, Chicana/Latina Studies, Violence Against Women and the The Feminist Wire. A former board member of the Phoenix based Arizona Workers Rights Center and the National Association of Chicana/o Studies, Dr. Téllez is a founding member of the Arizona Ethnic Studies Network, the Entre NosOtr@s Collective, the Chicana M(other)work Collective and is on the editorial review board for Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Téllez is the recipient of various national fellowships, teaching and research awards, she most recently was awarded an Arizona Humanities mini-grant in the Spring of 2016.
Miguel Fernández de Castro is an artist who works out of Sonora, Mexico. He works on long term discursive research projects that involve writing and visual arts. His work has been shown at Proyecto Paralelo, Mexico City (2016); Casa del Lago, UNAM, Mexico City (2016, 2015); Museo de Arte Moderno de México, Mexico City (2014); Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver (2013); Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles (2013); ATEA, Mexico City (2012/2013); Bikini Wax, Mexico City (2013); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Monterrey (2012); The Collaborative-MoLAA, Los Angeles (2012); Museo de San Ildefonso, Mexico City (2013); Jaus Gallery, Los Angeles (2011). He was a recipient of the Young Creators Grant, FONCA, México (2011-2012) and the Acquisition Prize of the X Bienal FEMSA, Monterrey (2012) and The Tierney Fellowship, New York (2010). He published the book El desplazamiento (T-E-E, Guadalajara. 2012) and developed the project A micro history of YouTube in Beirut (2014) during Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2013-2014). He recently completed a residency at PAOS, Guadalajara (2016).
Mike Wilson, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation and former Presbyterian lay pastor, is an activist along the United States-Mexico border. Calling himself an ‘independent operator” sponsored by Humane Borders, Wilson leaves water for migrants Crossing through the Tohono O’odham’s reservation, the second largest reservation in the United States. He maintains multiple water stations on the land, forming the shape of a cross under the shade of paloverde trees with 10 separate gallon jugs of donated water. This humanitarian act is in defiance of the Nation’s legislative council and the US Border Patrol.
Moysés Zúñiga Santiago is a Mexican photojournalist based in the Chiapas region. He has photographed conflicts between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government as well as migrants crossing into Mexico from Central America and out of Mexico into the United States. As a photojournalist, he has worked with the Associated Press (New York, New York), EFE (Madrid, Spain), Agence France Press (Paris, France), and La Jornada (San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico). He is also the recipient of a Rory Peck Training Fund grant for freelance journalists in high-risk areas.
Nina Rabin is the Director of the Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program and Clinical Professor of Law at the James E. Rogers College of Law at University of Arizona. Rabin is the director of the Tucson Immigrant Workers’ Project, a joint project of the Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW) and the Bacon Immigration Law & Policy Program, provides low-wage immigrant workers with legal information, advice, and counseling about their employment rights. Her publications include Disappearing Parents: Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System in the Connecticut Law Review, Unseen Prisoners: A Report on Women in Immigration Detention Facilities in Arizona in the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, and the forthcoming Understanding Secondary Immigration Enforcement: Immigrant Youth and Family Separation in a Border County in the Journal of Law & Education. Rabin is the recipient of an Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice in Spring 2017 and was twice named an Agnese Nelms Haury Faculty Fellow (Fall 2014 & Spring 2016).
Paul Turounet is a photographer based in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. His work considers the psychology and culture of the U.S.-Mexico border exclusively in Mexico and has been featured in various solo and group exhibitions in both the United States and Mexico, including the New Mexico State University Art Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Regis University in Denver, Colorado, the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson, Arizona, the University of Texas – Brownsville, Centro Cultural Tijuana in Tijuana, Mexico, and the Museo de Arte El Chamizal in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. His 2016 self-published book, Estamos Buscando A, was shortlisted and a runner-up for the 2016 Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award, and was included on the New York Times – The Best Photo Books of 2016.
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective based in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist. Postcommodity’s artwork engages an Indigenous lens to create art within and about the borderlands. They are the recipients of grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2010), Creative Capital (2012), Art Matters (2013), Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (2014), and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (2017). Their art has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: Contour the 5th Biennial of the Moving Image in Mechelen, Belgium; the Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Canada; the 18th Biennale of Sydney in Sydney, Australia; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale, Arizona; the 2017 Whitney Biennial in New York, New York; and the site-specific installation Repellent Fence at the U.S.-Mexico border near Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico.
Robin Reineke is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Colibri Center for Human rights and an Assistant Research Social Scientist at the Southwest Center at University of Arizona. Her research and teaching interests, centered in anthropology, include forensics, humanitarianism, global migration, and human rights along the U.S.-Mexico border. Furthermore, Reineke’s work with Colibri builds on nearly a decade of work at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner to support families of missing migrants. She has been published in the BBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Nation, and the documentary film, Who Is Dayani Cristal? She was awarded the Institute for Policy Studies’ Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award and Echoing Green’s Global Fellowship in 2014.