I believe that collaboration with others is the most effective way to improve a learning experience. Because of this, I make a commitment to planning courses as a team and tracking assessmement data as we make curriculuar changes. Even though instructors, designers, and project managers in a team have different policies and beliefs about learning, we must understand the value of bringing different teaching styles together and celebrate what each person brings to the team. This collaboration not only makes our learning content better; we can help professionalize each other as we learn from one another. With my background in secondary and higher-education, I understand a variety of ways to assess learning & engagment including formative assessment, summative assessment, data-tracking, self-assessment, labor-based assessment, and a preponderance of evidence.
I also take pride in creating community in the courses I develop. I place a high value on making sure the students know each other’s names, and the instructor or facilitator has the opportunity to get to know them as well. I believe students learn best in supportive and safe communities, so I strive to create the kind of environment where students rely on each other as their most valuable resources. Courses best create community by leveraging a variety of teaching modalities. I believe it is important for instructors to position themselves as leaders in a course, but they should also create activities that allow students to feel like the authority of the course. This creates more diverse and equitable learning environments for everyone.
I recently co-authored a new article with Dr. Ann Shivers McNair titled “From ‘Spring Break’ to ‘Reading Days’: Contingency, Relations of Power, and Positionalities in Experiences of Overwork During Academic Breaks.” It’s published in Academic Labor: Research and Artistry.
What did we learn about overwork and burnout during the pandemic?
We offer practical advice in higher education for avoiding burnout in the people under your care, students and otherwise.
Thank you for reading my compreshensive exam materials. On this page, you will find all of the artifacts you need for my comprehensive exams. While I could have sent these materials as .pdfs, I chose to embed the documents into my website because many of the artifacts I selected for this portfolio include images, hyperlinks, videos, ect. Because I want to situate my work in the digital humanities, I created a document more aligned with multi-modal principals of writing. As you browse, feel free to move forward or backward, explore links, use a screen reader, or download the .doc versions of documents I have included in order to accomodate your reading preferences.
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“I kept no dairy, and therefore, all incidents are from memory which might conceivably play tricks on me as I grow older. Although minor facts may differ slightly from the actual, all is as true and factual as memory will allow, and aided by some of my old friends from that era.” — Paul M Jones, Memories of Santa Rita.
In the fall of 2017, I got a chance to meet a group of minors who were involved in the longest strikes in US history (and the first-ever all women strike line). I was still working on my Master’s program when I had the opportunity to facilitate community writing workshops. The goal of the project was to collect narratives that recognize leaders of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers’ Union, Local 890 and celebrate their role in the 1950-952 Empire Zinc Mine Strikes. One participant revealed to us we were the first group of people to give the community “a place to put their memories.” In this manner, I developed an interest in the rhetorics of public memory.
Memory is not the same as history. In “Memory: Ars Memoriae, Collective Memory, and the Fortunes of Rhetoric” Bradford Vivian explains, “Memory continues to signify (whether by positive or negative examples) a medium of transhistorical continuity across breaches in time and circumstance. Memory thereby connotes preservation, repair, and even justice (of the symbolic or moral variety) in the wake of loss, destruction, and injustice” (Vivian 294). In other words, while history is a curation of facts meant to create a verifiable, linear account of what was said to have happened, memory is much more flexible and based in embodied human experience (Gronbeck). However, memory can be used to either create a master narrativedescription, or it can create or it can allow for multiple voices by inviting counter narrative (Small). Many contemporary discussions of public memory revolve around commemorative statues (Oñate statue, Confederate Statues) and historical sites (The Alamo, Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain). My own journey with public memory began while talking to writing workshop participants in Grant County, NM.
While talking to one community member, I came to learn the story of Santa Rita, once the townsite for the Chino Mine. In 1960, Kennecott Copper issued a removal notice which stated “all houses must be cleared” to expand the mine (Kennecott, 1965), and by 1970 the entire town was demolished. Despite this, Santa Ritans today—many in their 70s and 80s—maintain strong communal ties through their shared sense of home. In response to the destruction of the town, citizens formed “The Society of People Born in Space,” erected local monuments to the town, and continued celebrating Santa Rita’s biggest annual festival, Santa Rita Days. Each of these acts is an attempt to create, maintain, or strengthen the memory of Santa Rita, but for what purpose, I am not sure.
Inspired by the resilience of Santa Ritans, my specialization for the RCTE program will focus on the Public Memory of Santa Rita. The study of public memory offers those often seen as environmental victims the recognition for their resistance to oppressive forces of industry. In my research, I will examine the following questions:
How does this community form their identity around a sense of place?
How do people use memory to intervene with and persist through a loss of material space; home?
How do collaborative rhetorical practices help the community construct a collective memory?
As one of the five canons of rhetoric, memory has long taken a backseat in rhetorical studies. Cicero gave us the five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, memory, delivery, and style. These cannons are somewhat antiquated as they represent a definition of rhetoric we have long surpassed. In these terms, memory is no longer simply a technique for memorization and resuscitation. Nevertheless, it’s clear Cicero imagined how memory, as a skill serving the public, acted in preserving and defending culture. He said, “ Further, the complete history of the past and a store of precedents must be retained in the memory, nor may a knowledge of statute law and our national law in general be omitted…What need to speak of that universal treasure-house the memory?” (Book 1, 17). He linked national memory to great orators who learned history through reciting. Through the act of recitation and rote memorization, they became keepers of history for the sake of law. Since rhetoric moved away from oration, scholars have largely neglected memory as a subject of study. However, other fields like sociology and anthropology took up memory studies as a way of understanding culture. More recently, with the material turn, rhetoric and composition is seeing a resurgence in the interest of public memory.
Concepts of memory have been more popular in the social sciences, where scholars like Nora Pirrea theorize how memory is tied to notions of culture. Nora explains how memory is different from history. Our interest in lieux de memoire “where memory crystallizes and secretes itself has occurred at a particular historical moment, a turning point where consciousness of a break with the past is bound up with the sense that memory has been torn-but torn in such a way as to pose the problem of the embodiment of memory in certain sites where a sense of historical continuity persists (Nora 8). In other words, by studying memory, and sites of memory we study shifts in consciousness, splits from history as it is told. Nora articulates how memory is a collective act, requiring public commemoration, rather than an individual skill.
In social sciences, like rhetorical studies, we are particularly interested in publicor collective memory. In On Collective Memory, sociologist Maurice Halbwachs theories about the collective nature of memory: “While collective memory endures and draws strength from its base of a coherent body of people, it is individuals as group members who remember. While these remembrances are mutually supportive of each other and common to all, individual members still vary in the intensity with which they experience them” (48). As demonstrated by the epigraph written by Paul Jones above, individual remembering is important for creating a collective understanding of what happened. But people remember best through the discourse of their experiences. This lays the foundations for rhetorical thought about how memory connects the ‘identifying’ or constituting cultural groups (Burke).
Finally, I want to recognize the situatedness of rhetorical memory studies through places and objects. First, memory studies are inherently material. As Dickinson, Blair, and Ott write:
Places of memory are composed of and or contain objects such as art installations, memorabilia, and historic artifacts. Their rhetoricity is not limited to the readable or visible; it engages in the full sensorium. Such objects produce particular sensations through touch, sound, sight, smell, and taste. (29)
People commemorate through rituals and objects. When our field historically analyzed language, we’ve extended “texts” to include the study of visual and tactile objects. To study material rhetorics of memory, I might start by understanding the effect of objects, not what they say, but what they influence people to do or say.
Memory studies are also intrinsically ecological. Especially while studying the memory of a mining community, it is impossible to separate memory from its geography. Santa Rita is carved out of the Black Range mountains, home of the Chiricahua Apache tribe who were the first to discover copper in this area. The mine is both a source of sustenance and a depletion of local resources. It is both a source of pride and a symbol of oppression. The area is located in the US-Mexico borderlands where multiple contested borders intersect or overlap. A rhetorical approach to memory studies therefore necessitates the stance that multiple memories exist.
Memory rhetorics require an intersectional approach, my specialization is critical in nature, drawing on feminist, indigenous decolonial, and critical race theories. Rhetorics of extraction are foregrounded in an understanding of localized structural violence as created by racism, sexism, and classism as they overlap (Crenshaw, 1996), but they do not analyze damage and pain as points of data. Instead they investigate empowering responses to trauma—namely spatial-textual responses and creation of new spaces. I will examine what Jenny Rice (2012) terms memory claims as points of generating community empowerment. However, I will not rely on injury claims which build upon “the archive on pain” (Tuck and Yang, 2014, p.813). Inevitably, my positionality as white woman from academia instills me with certain biases, some I may not recognize. Thus, the specialization relies on counter-stories in the form of written narrative, oral histories, and critical analysis of material and spatial texts. It is grounded in rhetorical listening (Ratcliff), critical imagination, and strategic contemplation (Royster and Kirsch) including a listening for refusal (Tuck and Yang, 2014).
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A few members of our Writing workshop team gather around the bridge where the woman strikers held the line. From left to right, Kelli Lycke, Zakery Munoz, and Stephen Romero.
The community writing workshop experience with the Local 890 changed my understanding of how I want to write within the field of rhetorical studies‒in the service of others. Therefore, my specialization seeks to build relations with the community, work in solidarity with the community, and keep the research in the hands of the community. My participant, Olga Chavez, recently told me how researchers have come before to collect oral histories, and then they disappeared without a word. They failed to communicate what they did with the interviews. Equally, I came to learn about an oral history project in the past which was funded by grant money for the purpose of creating a community mural about Santa Rita. The artist/researcher collected 20+ oral histories, but the grant money was used up, and there is no mural to show for the efforts. To counter this history of research in this area, I am working to build lasting relationships with my participants. I recognize them as more than participants, and our relationship extends beyond the roles of researcher and subject.
Works Consulted
Blair, Carole. “Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric’s Materiality.” Rhetorical Bodies, edited by Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley, U of Wisconsin P, 1999, pp. 16-57.
Bodnar, John. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton UP, 1992.
Bradford, Vivian. “Memory: Ars Memoriae, Collective Memory, and the Fortunes of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 43, no. 3 (2018): 287-296. Accessed March 31, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2018.1454214.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement. The New Press, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques and Eric Prenowitz. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression” The Johns Hopkins University Press. Vol. 25, no. 2, summer 2005, pp. 9-63.
Dickinson, Greg et al. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials. U of Alabama P, 2010.
Flores, Richard R. Remembering the Alamo: Memor, Modernity, and the Master Symbol. U of Texas P, 2002.
Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Translated by F. J. Ditter and V. Y. Ditter in 1980. U of Chicago P. 1942.
Jones, Paul M. Memories of Santa Rita, Silver City Daily Press, 1985.
Kilbourn, Russel. Cinema, Memory, Modernity : The Representation of Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema, E-book, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010.
Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=1212658.
Massey, Doreen. For Space. SAGE, 2005.
McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium Is the Massage: an Inventory of Effects. Corte Madera, CA. Ginkgo Press Inc. 2001.
Murphy, Kaitlin M. Mapping Memory: Visuality, Affect, and Embodied Politics in the Americas. Fordham U P, 2019.
Neiger, Motti, et al. “On Media Memory: Editors’ Introduction,” On Media Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 1-24.
Nora, Pierra. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, no. 26, 1989, pp 7-24. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/2928520
Ratcliffe, Krista. “Defining Rhetorical Listening.” Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Southern Illinois University Press, 2005, pp. 17 – 47.
Rice, Jenny. Distant Publics: Development Rhetorics and the Subject of Crisis. U of Pittsburg Press, 2012.
Royster and Kirsch. “Chapter 5 – 6. Critical Imagination. Strategic Contemplation” Feminist Rhetorical Practices : New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies. Southern Illinois UP, 2012, p. 71 – 83.
Ruiz, Iris. “Post-Structuralism, Historical Theory, and Critical Race Theory: A Pyramid for Critical Historical Analysis.” Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities. Palgrave Macmillan, 1st ed. 2016, 27-39.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “R-Words: Refusing Research.” Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with youth and Communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014.
Turner, Kathleen. editor. Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases. U of Alabama P, 1998.
Weiser, M. Elizabeth. Museum Rhetoric: Building Civic Identity in National Spaces. The Pennsylvania State U P, 2017.
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For my ICR, I studied the history and methods of documentary film-making. I first became interested in the rhetoricity of documentaries through my former advisor and history professor, Dr. Samuel Truett. Based on my interests in mining history and memory studies, Dr. Truett recommended the film Bisbee 17 given my interest in public memory and mining history. Directed by Robert Greene, Bisbee 17 films current residents of Bisbee, AZ reenacting the 1917 Bisbee deportation. This led many community individuals to reexamine the intergenerational discrimination that has bled through the culture of the town. I was also drawn to the way this film used archival research to bring forward the history of segregation in copper mining communities. Since watching this film, I have become interested in the applications and possibilities of documentary film as a medium in rhetoric and composition scholarship.
Following the roadmap paved by Alexandra Hidalgo and her film-book Cámera Rhetórica, I see possibilities in merging narrative structures used by documentarians with the research methodologies and emphasis of academic scholarship to create multi-modal compositions. While Hidalgo is the most explicit proponent for documentary work in rhetoric and composition, scholars such as Alison Cardinal advocate for Participatory Video as a method for ethically researching literacy, power and embodiment. In “Remediating Transcultural Memory : Documentary Filmmaking As Archival” Dagmar Brunow articulates my particular interest, the intersections of documentary and memory studies. He explains: “documentary filmmaking as an intervention into the audiovisual archive, which implies the need to articulate a speaking position or a point of articulation, and the capacity of mediated memories to transgress these speaking positions” (6). As an archival researcher, I am well-aware of how archives are limited in the ways they represent marginalized people. My short exploration documentary film-making helps me to see how film could alleviate the constraints of archival methods alone. I believe that film can bring context to oral histories and archival material, allowing participants to demonstrate and share other ways of knowing.
During the infamous Fall 2020, I took an independent study class, FTV 599 “Documentary Production” with Professor and professional documentary editor Jacob Bricca. It is important to note that I took this class out of order—it is typically taught as a 400-level course for seniors earning their BFA in Film and Television. It was, quite literally, a crash course. As someone new to film, I crashed a lot. Alongside experimenting with different equipment, the class introduced me to the modalities of documentary including verite, B-roll, interview, reenactment, archival material and animation. I also learned about some of the overarching genres of documentary film. In Documentary Voice & Vision: A Creative Approach to Non-Fiction Media Production, Anderson and Lucas describe these genres: issue-based film, profile of a person, portrait of a place, single event story, and process film. Of course, this list is not exhaustive, but it provides a general overview of typical angles, especially for beginning film-makers. As I was learning to make my own film, I originally pitched my film as a profile of a person. However, I realized (not quickly) the need to switch my film to be a portrait of a place.
Kathleen Kryger took this picture of me in October 2020, when I went to New Mexico to film for my documentary class. The mine observation overlook was closed for COVID, so I had to stand on top of the car to get a good shot over the fence.
I was surprised in this course when Prof. Bricca introduced the class to the process of producing a film; many of the steps in the film process are very similar to the process we teach in our writing class: creating sample treatments (or proposals), researching, determining an angle, collecting footage, organizing the footage into reels by topic or theme. The first few weeks of the class were devoted to the different types of research a producer (or team of producers) can investigate throughout the course of making a film. In Documentary Storytelling, Second Edition: Making Stronger and More Dramatic Nonfiction Films, filmmaker, writer, and educator Sheila Curran Bernard explains to new filmmakers “Good Documentary making, with few exceptions, depends on good research. This is true for what may seem like a surprising range of film-making styles” (119). Such research includes interviews, archival research, fact checking, and creating chronologies (Curran Bernard). To my luck, I took this class at the same time as my Archival Research Methods course with Dr. Cristina Ramirez. The knowledge gained from these classes together gave me the opportunity to connect with archivists across the country—because of the constraints of the pandemic, I was not able to interview participants for my Documentary Production class. However, Prof. Bricca continues to give me advice for conducting interviews.
As I step back to reflect on what I learned from this course, I also see the similarities between organizing reels and coding data. In his book, Documentary Editing: Principles and Practice, Bricca describes the process of organizing footage into reels, or categories:
Start watching your select reels. They will be long and the work will start to get tedious, but this time around you don’t necessarily need to watch every single minute of every clip. You only need to watch long enough to decide how this clip should be categorized. Your goal here is to copy and paste some portion of this footage into new select reels that are topic driven rather than source driven… (Bricca)
He goes on to explain how he went about this process in editing the documentary The Bad Kids by Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe. When coding the footage for categories like indoctrination, he found this theme in both interview material verite scenes depicting behavior in classrooms. Like the process of coding, he says “putting this material in the same select reel led directly to certain sections in the final cut that explored these topics” (39).
The following semester, I took “History of Documentary,” which contextualized the history of documentary film and gave me an understanding of the movements. The primary focus of the course was to explore the ethics of film-making as they have evolved alongside documentary craft. Necessarily, one of the themes of the course was the development of film technology—film began in the 1800s through the process of taking pictures at short intervals. Film progressed as the equipment became smaller, more mobile, and later allowed sync sound (Barnouw). The different purposes of documentary varied across time as well. Almost as soon as film started to become popular, questions of ethics also began to arise. Film can create a trick of the eye—film makers began creating fakes that functioned as propaganda; “Film companies did not want to ignore [for example] catastrophes or other headline events merely because their cameramen could not get there” (Barnouw 25). Such discussions were important for developing our own sense of ethics in film.
Does it matter how “true” a film is to reality? What defines a documentary from other styles of film? We explored these questions and more throughout the course of Documentary History. After watching the 1922 film Nanook of the North, a film by Robert Flahert, often considered the first modern documentary, we discussed the extent to which the film depicts an ethnographic account of a Canadian Inuit tribe. The film seems to follow an indigenous man, whose name was actually Allakariallak, not Nanook as he travels the arctic with his family. The film actually depicts a traditional way of life for the family, wearing traditional clothing, sleeping in igloos, hunting with history tools. Many of the scenes are even staged or sensationalized Tobing Rony argues that producing this type of film is less a documentary and more resembling a taxidermy, “mak[ing] that which is dead look as if it were still living” (101). As we moved through films in history, the ethics became trickier. Should a film-maker like Leni Riefenstahl be held accountable for producing Hilter’s Triumph of the Will”? What is the difference between documentary film and propaganda? Many of these questions are also relevant to the study of rhetoric.
In fact, Professor Bricca devotes a certain amount of his classes explicitly teaching Aristolian rhetoric for the purpose of teaching students about film analysis. In Introduction to documentary, Bill Nichols devotes an entire chapter to “What gives Documentary its Voice.” The Chapter is a survey of the five canons of rhetoric and the three artistic proofs. He writes:
Like the orator of old, the documentarian speaks to the issues of the day, proposing new directions, judging old ones, and measuring the quality of lives and cultures. These actions characterize rhetorical speech not as “rhetorical” in the sense of argument for the sake of argument, but in the original sense of engaging with pressing matters of value and belief for which facts and logic offer an inadequate guide to proper conduct, wise decisions, or insightful perspectives. The voice of the documentary testifies to engagement with the social order and to a perspective on the values that underlie it.
It’s true, this class has helped me to understand rhetoric as not having discipline specific knowledge, but an interdisciplinary understanding of how communication shapes values. Through watching and analyzing the 30-some documentaries in History of Documentary, I have come to see how films are both a text, and a methodology for understanding and distributing knowledge.
Documentary film-making is—at least as Prof. Bricca presented it in his classes— inherently collaborative and feminist in nature. Collaborations are also a major theme as we discussed films together and offered feedback to one another. Of course, in taking these courses, I tried my best to reciprocate the distribution of knowledge, but this role is somewhat limiting as a student. Certainly, I could never balance the amount of time and effort Prof. Bricca extends to his students.For me alone, he provided individual conferences and feedback on an upward of 8 drafts. His feedback even extended beyond the semester, nearly to Christmas, ensuring my film was prepared for the screening at The Loft. Beyond that, he also provided feedback on my many reflections and essay, pointing me in the direction of literature I could read to learn more about film, feminism, and memory. Even lately, he reviewed my interview footage to give me advice on how to improve my shooting of interviews.
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[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” admin_preview_bg=”] This is not to say that all documentary film-makers are ethical—we had several conversations about the problematic ethics of sensationalism in popular media. However, the many critical articles we read focus on the critical methods of film makers. I am most inspired by the work of film-maker Penny Lane. I had seen her film, Nuts!, before the class. However, having her as a guest speaker in History of Documentary gives me insight to the rhetorical decisions she made throughout the production of her film. As both an academic and documentary film-maker, she was confronted with conflicting values: creating illusion and narrative vs. maintaining historical accuracy and transparency. She explains,
Debates about veracity in documentary film tend to be abstract. Filmmakers are often coy or anxious about the process by which they bend reality to create satisfying cinema, fearing that any admission of ‘manipulating reality’ undermines our authority as truth-tellers.
As a remedy, she created a digital appendix to her film, “Nuts! Notes.” Traditionally, while working in text-based writing, especially with regard to historical contexts, I use a lot of footnotes. In rhetoric & composition, contexts and decisions matter, so we are transparent about it. However, in playing with video reflections, and with creating the short film the previous semester, the length of the video quickly gets out of hand, sometimes these ‘tricky edits” are necessary for making a film work, and generally these kinds of asides are only interesting for particular audiences.
As part of my research philosophy, I am trying to make my writing as available to the community I am writing about as possible. So far, I have committed my publications to open access journals. I tried to share last semester’s video with community members, and I have asked for feedback from them on accuracy, etc. But generally, my writings have been for academic audiences. What I love about “Nuts! Notes” is that Lane has created a space for audiences at large to discuss her commentary. It’s charming and humorous, but not surprising that the people commenting in the appendix are some of her collaborators on the film—the so-called community historians. It’s actually brilliant that this space allows them to converse and build on the story she develops in the film! This is an idea I want to continue to think about in my own work. I want to create spaces, or at least share my work, in spaces that give the communities agency.
Certainly, what I enjoy most about producing films as an academic text is the collaborative nature of this work. In the short film I produced, I realized the need to collaborate with academics and community members. I collaborated with archivists from UNM, NMSU, and USU to help find the visual and historical archives for the film. Community members served as voice actors and consultants to help animate and discuss the archival material I procured. Lastly, RCTE doctoral candidate, Kathleen Kryger, volunteered as a crew member during the initial filming. As with all films, these people are listed in the credits as a formal way of recognizing their efforts. These participants are excited about their impact on creating a visual narrative for endangered memories, as film is often a more accessible composition to distribute and enjoy. In this way, I believe documentaries provide an opportunity to work with the community and produce compositions that further develop much-needed reciprocal relationships.
I am excited to share my interest in film as a medium for scholarship, especially as it enriches my understanding of embodied rhetoric. I believe that to truly understand the devastation of resource extraction, audiences must see the carved-away landscape and hear the memories of the community members through their own voices. Although this medium is largely uncharted in Rhetoric and Composition, journals such as Kairos and Enculturation have previously published video essays signaling a future in our field where the inclusion of film and videos enrich the discipline. By acting on this newly found passion, I am hoping to continue exploring the role of film as a product and method in the field of Rhetoric and Composition.
Works Cited
Anderson, Kelly and Martin Lucas. Documentary Voice & Vision: A Creative Approach to Non-Fiction Media Production, Taylor and Francis, 2016.
Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, Oxford University Press; 2nd, 1993.
Bisbee 17. Directed by Robert Greene, performances by Mike Anderson, Charles Bethea, Ken Boe, Benjamin Joel Caron, and Jeremey M. Caron, Doc Society, 2018.
Bricca, Jacob. Documentary Editing: Principles and Practice, Taylor and Francis, 2017.
Curran Bernard, Sheila. Documentary Storytelling, Second Edition: Making Stronger and More Dramatic Nonfiction Films, Focal Press, 2nd ed, 2007.
Hidalgo, Alexandra. Cámara Retórica A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology for Rhetoric and Composition. Computers and Composition Digital Press, Utah State University Press, 2017. https://ccdigitalpress.org/book/camara/intro.html Accessed 03 March, 2021.
Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Indiana UP, 3rd ed., 2017.
Tobing Rony, Fatimah. “Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North,” The Third Eye : Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, Duke UP, 1996.
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For my writing sample, I am submitting a collaborative project I am working on with my colleague, Caleb Kohs, chose this project because it represents the kinds of work I like to do: serving a community, complicating the idea of archival research, and making stories public—As I learn about myself as a scholar, it’s important to me to make things not only to be read, but things to be shared. The rhetorical theories underpinning this project, I hope, are clear. But rhetoricians are not the audience. Having shared an office for the first year of the PhD program, Caleb and I became close through our shared experiences as queer people from the Midwest. Our different expertises—he is interested in queer theory and and spacial rheorics; I am interested in archives and memory rheotrics—gave us the space to challenge one another and invent a space we both wish existed.
I submit to you a messy packet of documents because it represents the thought behind this kind of project. It is not simply a website with poor quality videos. We put thought into the interviewing process and the informed consent process. The Heartland Queer Youth Collective is a space we want our contributors to actively shape as they add their stories. While the Collective itself is “publishable,” I prefer to draw your attention to the underlying documents that are much uglier because it better demonstrates “strong research, writing, and critical thinking skills” (RCTE 20-21 Handbook). Because the Heartland Queer Youth collective serves a population of marginalized people—people who have long been excluded from academia—we have chosen to self-publish. Inspired by the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Project and Archive, it was important to us to keep the beloved artifacts within the hands of their owners. As a digital humanities project, our collective is on-going. We are actively seeking and accepting new participants, and we know the project will evolve as new voices emerge.
This packet was produced throughout the span of our Spring 2021 “Introduction to Rhetorical Theory” class. Aimee Mapes and several of our peer graciously guided the development of this project, offering articles to read as we were proposing the project. She also gave us feedback in the various stages. Moreover, I would like to thank Aimee for her unconditional emotional support and enthusiasm. Her labor, although somewhat invisible, was an important contribution to this collaborative rhetorical space.
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As I look back on my doctorate program, I realize the entire experience was changed by the pandemic. I arrived at the University of Arizona in the Fall 2019 excited about my studies and the people I would get to know. After only one semester of in-person classes, we switched to remote teaching and learning; we started using words like “social distancing,” and “quarantine.” I have earned most of my degree online, learning how to teach students in crisis and problem solving about how to interview my senior citizen research participants safely, and ethically. Despite the isolation, I have really benefited from the pandemic. Although I felt very isolated at home, my research, teaching, and personal life have benefited from this stillness. For me, this was a time to look inward and prioritize the things I value. I have also found that the pandemic created new opportunities for me to collaborate with others.
I have grown significantly as a professional in the areas of research and publication, as well as in my administrative skills. Although the pandemic has challenged me in each of these areas, it has also propelled me to learn new skills and adapt. Rather than focusing on conferences and networking, I was able to spend much more time working on my writing and research. Perhaps most significantly, I have established an interest and a skill in the mode of film this year, with a focus on documentary films. I took two classes in the film and television department this year, “Documentary production” and “Documentary history.” What I find most interesting about film is the potential for the inclusion of decolonial and feminist rhetorical methodologies. I intended for these courses to count as my ICR, but never realized how much they would influence my own research.
Over the last two years, I produced and edited my first documentary film called, This was Santa Rita. This opened my eyes to the collaborative nature of working with film. In emailing archivists from across the country, I was surprised how eager others were to help me find the materials that interest me. They offered suggestions for finding resources and they spent time scanning documents to send back to me. One archivist, at New Mexico State University, shared with her own family connection to my research topic which deepened the emotional experience of working with the Rio Grande Historical Photo Collection. Although this film did not play out the way I hoped it would— I could not obtain interviews during Fall 2020— creating this film helped me to rethink the materiality of memory work. I was able to gather a lot of archival materials from different institutions across the nation, and I built the story from these materials. I asked local community members to voice-act the archival materials. I started to imagine how film can be a medium of remembering and re-membering.
From this experience, I also started reflecting on embodiment in narrative. I believe stories are best told when they are embodied. My favorite part of This was Santa Rita did not make it to the final cut, because it simply wasn’t interesting for other audiences. This section of the film was a series of letters written back and forth. My peers’ feedback was that this section was too hard to follow because the letters in the background did not hold the audience’s attention. I learned stories are best told when there are people we can relate to, when we can hear their actual voices, and see their faces. I have since been thinking about film and its ability to embody stories in a way that archival histories cannot. As a result, film has become a methodology for my work in material rhetorics of memory. As I embark on my data collection process, I have interviewed one participant in her home surrounded by the objects she has collected and saved. In the film, she shows me her figurines. She tells me where she got them, why she kept them, and what they mean to her. Filming her oral history in her home allows me to preserve and contextualize these artifacts, much like curating an archive. While my film is composed of institutional archival materials, many memory materials stay in the home—I’d like the items people keep to bring life through film and interviews.
As a result of these ponderings, I also started collaborating with my colleague Caleb Kohs on curating the Heartland Queer Youth Collective. This is an extension of both my interests in material rhetorics and his interest in queer spaces. We started imagining this project back in to 2019 when we were assigned an office together and spend many of our days recalling our experiences going up as queer folks in the Midwest. Inspired by Chicana por mi Raza, the project is a collection of artifacts and interviews from queer people who grew up in the Midwest. In creating this project with Caleb, we began to think about how a collective, rather than an archive, would allow people to classify themselves and contextualize their own materials. What would happen if people could determine how their artifacts can be searched? What keywords would be used, how would they identify themselves? At this point we have four interviews on the website and one pending. We hope the collective will someday produce the data for a book.
Beyond my research, l I’ve grown in the area of publication as well. Last semester, I partnered with Ann Shivers-McNair, to work through the process of proposing, drafting and revising an academic article. I’ve been insecure about this process thus far, especially when I often think of the many days I would spend writing a term paper only to have it rejected. Writing an article together gave me support and confidence through this process. I learned that proposals allow a writer to enter a conversation about an article with much lower stakes, and the process of submitting a proposal allows the writer to get feedback even before writing a draft. I also learned that a submitted draft does not have to be perfect. Working with Ann helped me to see how her process of writing an article is no different from my process and that the submitted draft can still be in many ways, raw or unpolished. Finally, I learned that my ideas are worth publication. I picked out the CFP and pitched our topic to Ann. In the end, the article that we co wrote was accepted into the Journal of Academic Labor. This is my first publication in over two years. I’m delighted that during the pandemic, my ability to research and publish flourished, even though many other aspects of my life did not.
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[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” admin_preview_bg=”] I also grew a lot in the area of administration. I only taught one class over the last year, but I have worked in multiple administration positions. First, as the textbook editor, I learned a lot about collaboration and leadership. My role as the textbook editor was to collaborate with stakeholders across the program to determine priority revisions. In the previous year, I worked with instructors to collect survey data from them on how to make the textbook a better tool for teaching. Through this dara, I learned that the textbook needed to incorporate curriculum content aligned with English 102 and 108 and more student samples. I also arranged to meet with the director of assessment, Erin Whittig. Through this collaboration, the editorial team implemented findings from programmatic assessment to inform our revisions. As a result the new edition of the textbook has a section on portfolios for the first time.
Next, I met with Accessibility, Equity, and Inclusion to learn about how we can make the textbook more equitable and accessible. They challenged us with the objective to reduce the cost of the textbook. To do so we took out a lot of content. I led the team through the process of examining the cost of each image, activity, and supplementary text included within the textbook so we could determine how to cut content to reduce the cost of the textbook. We also decided to write our own image descriptions and alt-text to reduce the costs. In the end we were also able to establish a few donation textbooks from student authors who did not want their textbooks. As a result, we were able to donate three copies to the library to put on reserve for students who might have trouble accessing the book. Thus, we accomplished our goal of collaborating to make the textbook more accessible.
As I talk about my journey with administration, it’s important to remember that nearly all of these interactions took place remotely. Everyone was learning how to operate remotely and asynchronously, and there was no model for how to adapt our working routines. Working on this team also required a very new leadership style for me. I’m used to working in very collaborative roles where a team works together to establish what needs to be done and to delegate based on skill and interest. This team was quite different because they wanted checklists, and they wanted to be told what they needed to complete each week. Several times my teammates told me “just tell me what to do, and I will do it.” As I got to know my teammates better, I began to understand their strengths and how to delegate tasks. In addition, I had to be more flexible with project management. I am used to using project management software where everyone tracks their own tasks; this team preferred a more low-tech option. We were able to establish protocols for taking continuous notes through Google Doc each week, since one of our members was not able to meet with us synchronously. We also had to problem solve, how to include this member asynchronously in our meetings.
Finally, I’ve grown in my new position as the graduate director of placement and assessment. In this position, I helped design and carry out the first ever (and the second ever) online freshmen orientation. As a placement and assessment advisor last year, I learned so much about how students are placed into our classes through directed self-placement. However, graduate director position has granted me much more power, and with that power an understanding of the institution on a larger scale. For example, I have learned a lot about course equivalencies and how the courses that we teach here at UArizona fit into the broader network of courses across the nation and the world. In trying to determine which external courses align with our own, I see the importance of incorporating current theories of composition into our curriculum and ensuring our courses are always informed by our scholarship. Often the classes which are rejected for equivalency are out-of-date in their course objects and teaching styles.
While I have much to learn, and much more work to do as the graduate director of placement and assessment, I’m excited about the work I’m going to perform this year to continue that growth. First, I’m going to work on the transfer portfolio, a process which allows transfer students to gain Foundations Writing credit without completing coursework. This option helps students whose credits have expired or those who took composition classes which did not transfer correctly. The transfer portfolio allows them to demonstrate Foundations Writing competency through the curation of writing samples. As it stands, the transfer portfolio is facilitated by instruction in Google Docs, and students submit their portfolio as a folder in Google Drive. After collecting survey data from the last two rounds of transfer portfolio students, I believe the transfer portfolio can be more organized and accessible if the instructional materials are integrated into a D2L course shell. Student data indicated these students would benefit from the ability to collaborate on selecting artifacts, review sample portfolios, and get feedback on their drafts before submitting their portfolio. The D2L course provides structured modules for completing sections to the portfolio and optional discussion boards where students can interact with each other as they draft. I also believe the D2L course will allow us to include various modalities, such as video instruction. We will begin piloting the new transfer portfolio course in March to see if students benefit from the class-like structure.
In the same manner. I would like to use this position to make the graduate director and the placement advisor training materials more accessible and organized. Those invaluable materials were created both by Aly Higgins and by Kathleen Kryger, and they display their wonderful talent in creating instructional content. However, the training documents are not organized in a way that would allow the next placement director to pick those materials up and continue building on them. In fact, many of the documents are difficult to find. I would like to sequence these materials so that the next placement advisors and directors can access the materials more like a course. This is especially important as my boss, Erin Whittig, is retiring in 3 years. Creating a course would make the training process more sustainable after she leaves.
As I reflect back on my accomplishments in RCTE thus far, I realize my interest are diverse, and I have been granted a lot of opportunities. Among the experiences I did not describe, I have also been a member of the graduate student council for the last two years, a representative of the English Graduate Union all three years, and active member of the WriPaca subcommittees, the webcordinator for Peitho, avid sewist, and the manager of my family (I have a partner and two dogs). Sometimes I am not sure how I have managed all of these responsibilities.
I mentioned before, the pandemic brought a sense of stillness to my life. Before the pandemic, I filled my calendar to the max with obligations—summer conferences, department meetings, group projects. I scheduled everything except moments for my sanity. I even ate my lunch while walking to the next meeting. I believed that to succeed in academia, I had to be competitive; I thought I had to make myself indispensable to the program. I have since begun saying no to extra-curricular tasks. I hear the voice of my former mentor Michelle Hall-Kells: “If it does not bring you joy, don’t do it.” The pandemic gave me the excuse to take time for myself. It also allowed me to reflect on the obligations that are important to me.
During my doctoral program, I have also attended ZERO conferences. I have also attended far fewer department and programmatic meetings than in the past. When I got tired of my term papers that were not working, I turned them in—usually unfinished. I became territorial of my time. I started tracking the time I spend on my various activities: only 20 hours per week working, and only 10 hours per week of service. Tracking this has enabled me to free up time for the projects that are important to me. Setting these boundaries has allowed me to accomplish more—I’ve been able to deepen the collaborative relationships with my colleagues, participants, and professors. I’ve let go of many proposed projects to spend more time on the research I care about. In doing less, I have accomplished more.
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Briefly describe a study you plan to conduct. In detail, explain the methods you will use for data collection and analysis, and the methodology that will guide your work. Explain why you made these decisions and the limitations of your chosen design.
My dissertation is a historical recovery project that unearths the history of a small town in New Mexico which was swallowed by its copper mine. The project takes the form of a film-book, using actor-performed archival materials alongside oral history interviews with former residents and their descendants. It explores how citizens of the town memorialize their hometown and cope with the destruction from the extraction industry. Santa Rita, New Mexico was the townsite for the Chino Mine, once the fourth largest copper mine in the world. By the 1930’s new technologies lined the pockets of company executives, and the mine transitioned into an open pit, eating away at the land around Santa Rita. In 1960, the company issued a removal notice that “all houses must be cleared,” and by 1970, the town was gone (Kennecott Copper Corporation 3). Despite a complete loss of space, the citizens of Santa Rita maintain strong communal ties through their shared sense of home.
This is a picture of the recently expanded mine taken in the 70s. This photo can be found in the R. Gilbert Moore Papers at Utah State University. I have permission to use this image in my research.
I am researching how communities commemorate and memorialize their past. Though Santa RIta town was swallowed by the expanding copper mine, citizens of Santa Rita New Mexico hold annual reunions, maintain a correspondence list, regularly talk and post to a community Facebook group, and “attend the funerals of anyone from Santa Rita, regardless of if [they] know the person” (Terry Humble, personal interaction, 2021). My interest in public memory of extraction includes a focus on the intersections between place and space literacies, public memory, monuments and memorials, and the formation of new places as acts of resistance and resilience to a loss of home. Merriam and Tisdale world define these as “ethnographic interviews” because the type of information elicited from an interview is data about the culture of a group.
For my project, my tentative research questions are:
How does this community form their identity around a sense of place? – This question investigates the ecological approach to memory material, acknowledging that the landscapes and resources are part of identity formation. As examined in my specialization statement, memory is deeply intertwined with identity.
How does such a community, impacted by extraction, intervene with and persist through a loss of material space; home? – I want to point out how the question specifically highlights resilience and persistence, as opposed to pain (Tuck and Yang). In this way, my work differs from my predecessor Jenny Rice whose work focuses on injury claims as a part of public memory.
How do collaborative rhetorical practices help the community construct a collective memory? – Here, I want to highlight how my community and collaborative practices shape memory. As such, I am interested in coding collective efforts and attitudes.
As I mentioned above, I am collecting archival materials alongside film-ed interviews to create a hybrid film-book. Such a film-book is modeled after Alexandra Hidalgo’s Cámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology for Rhetoric and Composition. While the film is meant to be watched and heard, it will follow the more academic genre conventions including a methods section, chapters, and an appendix. Working with documentary necessitates cutting material, including interviews. For this reason, the appendix will include the complete oral history interviews. I will also include an index of footnote to denote other editing decisions.
I will code the collected oral stories alongside various archival materials using the constant comparative method to draw conclusions. Oral history interviews alone could not capture the breadth of information I want to collect for this research project. First and foremost, my participants now range in ages 72-105. As they age, I am in danger of losing more perspectives. COVID-19 has accelerated the loss of Santa Ritans, as many participants have passed away in the time between imagining this project and now. Weaving in archival material allows for me to include the voices of some of those who have passed away. As Harriet Bradley writes in “The Seductions of the Archive: Voices Lost and Found,” the archive helps us to understand the dialectical nature of the relationship between the past and present and our own positioning within this.” By coding oral history interviews I will conduct alongside the letters and recollections of members who have past, I hope to understand how the commemoration practices for Santa Ritans have evolved over time. I hope to understand how perceptions of public memory in the 1980s converse with people still living.
First, I need to acknowledge the contested definition of archives. Marlene Manoff describes the conversations about how to define archive: “Even librarians and archivists have become somewhat careless in their use of the term.” The term originally referred to objects collected in a library or museum collection overseen by an archivist; the definition has expanded with the addition of digital archives to include audio and video recordings. Glenn and Enoch point out how archival research sometimes extends beyond the institutional preservation of documents. They note:
Not all archival research in rhetoric and composition begins—or ends—on a university campus or at a prestigious research library, however. With increasing regularity, many researchers in rhetoric and composition have looked beyond [these institutions] to consider what other, lower-case-a archives might hold, archives that don’t immediately promise insights into the practices or histories of our field. These archives can range from small, local archives run by [counties, historical societies, or foundations or they might be] boxes of materials found in someone’s office, garage, or even in a relative’s attic” (17).
During the pandemic, I worked with the formal archives to pull documents from the archives at Utah State University, New Mexico State University, and the University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest research. However, many of my other documents came from my participants. One ‘archive,’ the Santa Rita archives, was simply a manila folder of some photocopies of newspaper articles found at the Silver City library. Many more documents were handed to me by my participants as they were eager to share information they’d been collecting from their family members. Therefore, I use the word archive with the loosest definition to include personal memory materials of my participants.
This is an image of the catholic school being loaded up on a truck to move out of Santa Rita. The image is provided by my participant Sookie Sias. Her brother is in the forground of the image. He is using a rod to hold the electrical wires off the ground as they load the building.
I want to acknowledge the problem with using archives loosely. First, archivists are trained professionals, and there is a labor associated with the work they do. In “Invisible Hands: Recognizing Archivist’s work to make Records Accessible” Morris and Rose describe the process of creating an archive, including creating aids, maintaining order and organization, and working with the researchers to find documents. By referring to the personal archival material of my participant as archives, I do not mean to erase the work of the Institutional Archivists. Following the recommendations of this article, I did a majority of my Archival (with a capital A) research during the height of the pandemic, when I could not meet with my participants in person. I first reached out to the archivist to conduct a reference interview with archivists, Elizabeth Villa and Teddy Morena at New Mexico State University (the Rio Grande Historical Collection), Daniel Davis and Braydon Wright at Utah State University (The Gil Moore Papers), and Tomas Jaehn at the Center for Southwest Research (Schmitt Collection, 1977-1980). I want to give credit to these archivists who spent their time searching and scanning documents for me, some of them discounting or waiving the archival fees out of pure generosity. I name these people as part of my methodology in hopes to counteract that erasure of collapsing Archival and archival research.
However, I identify as a decolonial, queer scholar. Therefore, it is also important to acknowledge the Archive’s role in creating imperial narratives of history. Manoff describes how archives are not neutral nor innocent in the colonization of marginalized people, as they “as providing evidence of a desire to consolidate and justify imperial power” (14) and record and document the empire was a way to bolster feelings of colonial power, even in the absence of full control of vast geographic territories (17). Indeed, Archives (with a capital A) have long preserved only documents deemed worthy of preservation. By limiting archival research to institutional archives overseen by an archivists, a researcher excludes the representation of many people:
[I]n some cases, all—women, indigenous people, people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ, people with disabilities, and people of lower economic status. Or it inserts them in archives not as subjects but as objects: people about whom others voice opinions but whose own voices are muted, overwritten, and nearly (but, thankfully, not entirely) erased. (McKee and Porter 60).
This issue is especially important to reckon with because my research takes place in the Southwest borderlands. The former town of Santa Rita was situated 74 miles north of the present-day US-Mexico border. This land was considered Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase of 1854. To complicate this issue further, Santa Rita was located in the Black Range mountains, home of the Mescalero and Chiricahua Apache until their violent removal, leading to their imprisonment in 1894. Many of the Santa Ritans represented in my research are descendents of both Mexican and Apache people. As such, the methodologlies I use are informed by feminist, de-colonial scholars of color. As a part of my research philosophy, I believe in building lasting relationships with my participants.
When I first began my dissertation research, I was met with skepticism. I showed up in a small town at a local memorial site with a camera and Frances Gonzales (now my community liaison) approached me with a scornful tone: “Excuse me! Can I help you?” We laugh about it now that we are friends, but her reaction comes from a place of trying to protect her local history. She was understandably worried about the treatment of the union hall, a local monument for residents of Grant County, NM. At one point, I worried that I could not complete this project because I could not “break in” to the community; the community has a history of distrust with the academic community. One participant, Olga Chazev, told me that many academics come to interview people, but they soon disappear without a trace (personal interaction). Only through our plácticas (Fierros and Delgado Bernal) over lunch, have I earned Frances’ trust. She has become vital to my research, not only offering me a place to stay when I visit, but offering an ethos of trust when she connects me to interview participants. Frances has an activist goal in mind because her father was born and raised in Santa Rita, and many of the mentors she has looked up to in life were raised in Santa Rita. Reciprocityas a research method can be problematic—but I try to acknowledge “the generosity of [Frances] time, expertise, and support to me as I [am] undergoing my research” (Grohowski 46), and I try to help her in the ways I can. Because of my relationship with Frances and her connections, a majority (all of them so far) of my interviews and oral histories are people of color.
Although I am not a person of color, I am adopting a methodology of herencia by treating the documents the participants give me as having equal historical value as those I’ve pulled from institutional Archives. As Ramírez explains, such a position create “a way in which to include [participants’] local communities – the barrios, churches, not-for-profits, and other non-academic spaces of cultural gatherings, including [their] families’ histories – in order to uncover marginalized voices and spaces that have been suppressed by traditional methodologies” (166). In alignment with the work of Ramírez, participants have given me letters written by their family members to one another and articles they have written for the local bi-lingual, Chicano newspaper El Reportero which no longer exists and presently does not have an official archive.
Furthermore, although not all people of Santa Rita are people of color, they are displaced people. When houses are moved to different locations, personal archival documents become lost, disorganized, gifted. Such movements complicate the ability to create official archives of Santa Rita. Accordingly, Rodrigo Lazo urges us to consider the importance of what they call migrant archives or “texts of the past that have not been written into the official spaces of archivization, even though they weave in and out of the buildings that house documents” (200). Many of the documents of analysis have been housed in the closets of my participants, requiring me to physically travel to different locations to conduct research. As well, Lazo writes “For American studies to move beyond the fixed archive of an Anglo-American nation, scholars will have to undertake more multilingual work in migrant archives. Texts written in languages other than English can lead scholars to alternative ways of remembering the past, new ways of naming multiple nations and communities, and even the invention of new ontologies” (201). Indeed, some of the materials I have collected are written in Spanish, requiring translation and, at times, participant consultation. But the translation and interpretation moves beyond linguistic translation, “Because migrant archives do not have buildings devoted to them, it is up to committed Americanists [and Rhetoricians] to locate their contents, read them carefully, and provide contexts for their emergence” (214). This means carefully documenting who saved the documents and their relationship to the documents.
I am situating my work in the digital humanities by using film to document and contextualize such archival material. Drawing on scholars such as Elizabeth Bentley and Jamie A. Lee with FARR to re-animate archival materials “in a manner that would best allow its contents to be publicly shared, celebrated, and experientially known” (187). I am collaborating with Tucson voice actors to create dramatic readings of letters, songs, myths, and recollections of Santa Ritans who have passed to juxtapose them with historical photos and filmed oral histories of living residents and/or descendants of Santa Ritans. By giving these documents a voice, I hope to emphasize the living memory of the town “by moving beyond a conception of the archive as static histories kept neatly on shelves and in acid-free boxes” (Bentley and Lee with FARR 186). As well, I hope not to place more importance on the recollections of the living than those who have passed.
I want to distinguish that I am not filming oral histories because I want to create a film; I am creating a hybrid film for my dissertation because the filming of oral histories allows us to record bodies in transition (physically and metaphorically) and afford fluidity that other archival methods do not allow. Historically, archival research has been disembodied (Dolmage). Archivist Jaime Lee calls for a greater acceptance and use of oral history as archivals records. In particular, engaging audio-visual modalities in the archives challenges power structures that have historically supported colonial and otherwise unjust archival practices. Lee uses the body as a framework through which to consider the archives both because archives are by definition a ‘body of evidence’ and because we all inhabit different bodies which mark varied experiences with the archive—relevant to my work, it is important for the audience to hear the accents and emotions of the oral history accounts. It is also relevant to see the color of their skin (Hidalgo). Lee remarks that oral histories are embodied documents of evidence that speak against the objective, static aims of the archive—to document history.
In order to counteract the damage of colonial archives, I am also careful not to take documents from my participants. Cotera describes the process of building the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Collective. First, she notes that the project is a digital memory collective rather than an archive partly because it operates outside of the colonizing, neo-liberal demands of the institution: IRB, lack of nuanced understandings of collective consent, rejection or collaborative scholarship, reference to participants as “subjects.” In fact, the academy has largely resisted these kinds of public facing digital platforms, ignoring them as sites of legitimate scholarship. In this way, Chicano por mi Razais a model for understanding how we would like to pursue the creation of my film. It also notes how memory collectives are built by the people whose story it tells. Important to working with marginalized people, Cotera explains how their digital collective grants copyrights to all contributors and rarely takes the documents from the hands of their owners. For this reason, I am scanning and photographing the documents my participant refers to. As well, I am giving them a copy of their full interview, free of copy-right restrictions. My consent form states they can share their interview and publish it wherever they want. While Cotera believes this resource should be restricted to those who continue to also build on the project, I am committed to keeping the film open-access so my participants have access to the product of their labor.
While I have thought carefully about my research methods, it’s important to address the limitations of these methods. One such limitation is the issue of consent in archival research. While some of my materials, like the Gil Moore papers, come from an archive gifted by Gil Moore himself, consent is much trickier with my other documents (R. Gilbert Moore Papers). McKee and Porter asks these questions:
What are researchers’ ethical responsibilities to individuals and communities represented in the archives and to their descendants? With whom should archival researchers consult when addressing ethical issues? What are the rights of the dead and living people represented in the archives? How do issues of consent, particularly considerations of how materials got in the archive in the first place, impact how and whether archival work should be conducted? (McKee and Porter 61).
Such questions do not have clear-cut answers. For example, Frances gifted me a personal letter her father wrote to a close friend. As Tuck and Yang posit, the stories and information individuals share are not always theirs to give away. Therefore, I have to rely on my intuition to trust that her father left this letter in her care and her consent is sufficient. I feel comfortable using this letter because it was left to her in a box alongside historical newspapers so she could eventually write a book. As a more complicated example, I found a photocopy of an unpublished memoir by former resident Robert “Gabby” Gardner in the Santa Rita Archives. Since I don’t know who curated the archives, I also have no way of knowing how the memoir was procured. I ultimately chose to include his recollection in my research because of his proclamation in the preface: “The town is now gone, gobbled up by the copper mine. That’s why I am writing this book, to let you know about the town that was there.” His statement of purpose, I feel, gives me permission to his words to further his goal—I am spreading the word about the town that was there.
The first page of Robert Gardner’s auto-biography. I found this in the Santa Rita archives at the Silver City Public library.
As I am considering questions of consent, I have also determined the kinds of material I don’t feel comfortable using. Among the Gil Moore papers, there are Born in Space Reunion books full of family photos. It’s clear members of the family included these photos to share with one another for the purpose of remembering the town. However, it’s unsettling for me to use these family photos to further my research agenda, which is investigating rhetorical memory. My audience is primarily academics, and so it would be strange to use photos of people who themselves have not granted me permission nor have their kin.
I am also dealing with the ethics of refusal (Tuck and Yang). This weekend I met with two potential participants who agreed to an interview, but when I got to their house, they were not interested in being recorded. They granted me permission to take notes about our conversation, which can help guide my research, but did not get an interview that I could code. This process of negotiating consent required me to ask exactly what the participants were comfortable with. Despite this, the interaction was fruitful; with permission, I procured the court documents of one Santa Rita who was killed in a mining accident. This document demonstrates how the mining company used language to avoid responsibility for the accident. With documents like this, I can learn more about the relationship dynamics between the company and the townspeople. Had I not read their discomfort with the interviewing process, it’s likely I would not have the documents they gave me.
Works Cited
Bentley, Elizabeth and Jaime A Lee with FARR “Performing the Archival Body: Inciting
Bradley, Harriet. “The Seductions of the Archive: Voices Lost and Found.” History of Human Sciences, vol. 12, no. 2, 1999, Accessed 04 Aug. 2020.
Cotera, María. “Nuestra Autohistoria: Toward a Chicana Digital Praxis.” American Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 3, Johns Hopkins UP, Sept. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2018.0032. 23 March 2021.
Glenn, Cherly, and Enoch, “Invigorating Historiographic Practices in Rhetoric and Composition Studies.” edited by Alexis E. Ramsey, et al. Working in the Archives: Methods for Rhetoric and Composition. Illinois UP, 2009. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=1354654. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.
Grohowski, Mariana. “Reciprocity as Epicenter: An After-Action Review.” edited by Kristine L. Blair and Lee Nickoson. Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis. WAC Clearing House, 2018. https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2018.0056.2.02. Accessed 13 Oct. 2021.
Hidalgo, Alexandra. Cámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology for Rhetoric and Composition. E-book, Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2017.
Kennecott Copper Corporation. “Pit expansion will need Santa Rita Townsite.” Chinorama, Mar.-Apr. 1965, pp. 1-5.
Lazo, Rodrigo. “Migrant Archives: New Routes in and out of American Studies.” edited by A. B. Pinn et al. Teaching and Studying the Americas: New Routes in and out of American Studies. Palgrave McMillan, 2010.
Lee, Jaime A. “In Critical Condition: (Un)Becoming Bodies in Archival Acts of Truth Telling.” Archivaria The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists, 88, 14 Nov. 2019. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13703. Accessed 23 March 2021.
Manoff, Marlene. “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines.” Project Muse,vol. 4, no. 1, https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2004.0015, Accessed 4 Aug. 2020.
McKee, Heidi A. and James E. Porter. “The Ethics of Archival Research.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 64, no. 1, Sept 2012.
Morris, Sammie L. and Shirley K Rose, “Invisible Hands: Recognizing Archivists’ Work to Make Records Accessible.” edited by Alexis E. Ramsey, et al. Working in the Archives: Methods for Rhetoric and Composition. Illinois UP, 2009. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=1354654. Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.
Gilbert Moore Papers. Boxes 1 and 2, Series IV: Society of Persons Born in Space. Utah State University, Logan, UT. 28 Sept. 2020.
Ramírez, Cristina D. “Rhetorical Herencia: Writing Toward a Theory of Rhetorical Recovery and Transformation.” Latinx Writing and Rhetoric Studies,vol. 1, no.1, June 2020, Accessed 19 Oct. 2020.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “R-Words: Refusing Research.” Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014.
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Ellen Cushman writes that centralizing a Western rhetorical tradition contributes to epistemological hierarchies of “other/ed” rhetorics that establish boundaries of exclusion in rhetoric and writing studies. Consider some of the readings in rhetorical theory that question the centrality of the Western rhetorical tradition. Explain how scholars on your list attempt to critique Eurocentric conceptualizations of rhetoric. Discuss how rhetoric is being framed by current scholars who are considering cultural, racial, and gendered discursive practices beyond those of the Greeks or Eurocentric perspectives. In the conclusion, posit what this framing says about our contemporary study of rhetoric.
In 1996, Ellen Cushman wrote about the ways in which rhetoricians can affect social change. Among her critiques of our roles as teachers and researchers, she wrote about how we often “fail to consider the perspectives of people outside of the academy, [and therefore] we overlook valuable contributions to our theory building” (24). The field of Rhetoric has grown considerably since 1996, especially with the inclusion of interdisciplinary methods. Among these developments, rhetoric has learned to lean heavily on critical theory in order to reduce colonizing ideology and remove the distance between privileged groups of people and those historically marginalized from university settings. One of the first moves in closing this gap, of course, is the decentralization of Eurocentric conceptualizations of rhetoric. As Melea Powell so eloquently puts in the Octalogs III, “Our discipline’s inclination to fetishize the text above the body, combined with a narrowness of vision that insists on connecting every rhetorical practice on the planet to Big Daddy A and the one true Greco-Roman way does not exactly build a sustainable platform for the continued vibrance of our disciplinary community” (121). In response to the very valid critiques of our field, scholars in our field have developed off-shoots of critical theory to reframe the contemporary student of rhetoric.
Among these frameworks, is the feminist framework which draws on the rhetorical knowledge of women that has long been overlooked in favor of more masculine ways of knowing and being. As the flagship text for rhetorical feminist book, Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies edited by Royster, Krisch, and Bizzell outlines the goals of the feminist ‘landscape’ and ‘topography’:
Acknowledging women’s rhetorical research, scholarship, and teaching that is based directly on the growth of knowledge and understanding gained over the last few decades.
Bringing evidence of the rhetorical past of women into the present—”recovering, rescuing, (re-)inscripting” (14).
Finding innovative ways to engage in an exchange with rhetors of the past which imaginatively enables a more dialogic relationship between past and present.
Learning how to listen more carefully to the voice we study in order to critique our analytical assumptions and frames.
The editors note how recovering women and feminist ways for creating rhetorics, create “the capacity to propel general knowledge-making processes in the field at large— if not forward— at least to another, better-informed, more inclusive” (Royster and Kirsch 19).
In chapter 5 of Rhetorical Feminist Practices, Royster and Kirsch articulate two methologies of rehtorical feminist theory: Critical Imagination and Strategic Comtemplation. Critical Imagination requires the researcher to gather all of what they know about a subject to speculate methodically about what is missing. Strategic contemplation asks researcher to “linger deliberately inside of their research tasks in this space…to take as much into account as possible but to withhold judgment for a time and resist coming to closure too soon in order to make the time to invite creativity, wonder, and inspiration into the research process” (84-85). This method, critical to my own work in memory, allows the researcher to see a bigger picture of their subject, and to understand the complexities or multiplicity of their context. In this way, we cannot analyze rhetorics without understanding the people who created and lived the rhetorics.
While this act of “listening” is not new to the study of rhetoric, Krista Ratcliff calls for a recentering of the importance of listening in rhetoric as a tennent of Feminist rhetorical theory. She defines rhetorical listening as “as a trope for interpretive invention and more particularly as a code of cross-cultural conduct. As a trope interpretive invention, rhetorical listening signifies a stance of openness that a person may choose to assume in relation to any person, text, or culture” (17). She outlines how a focus on listening, as opposed to writing or speaking may inform rhetorical studies. This speaks directly in opposition to Eurocentric definitions of rhetoric, like “the art of persuasion (Big Daddy-A).
Chapter three of Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope, Cheryl Glenn outlines the nuances in the work of feminist scholars in rhetoric. She offers that feminist rhetorical frameworks can disidentify with eurocentric conceptions of rhetoric by making the language of scholarship more resemble the language of our lives: “down-to-earth language (the vernacular), unadorned prose (she eschews footnotes, which signal “for academic readers only”), and homely anecdotes (personal experience) as she grapples with thorny and complex socio cultural issues, such as pedagogy, education, and visual culture” (56). She notes, “[u]nlike the goal of traditional rhetoric, hers is not to dominate” (58). Glenn argues, feminist rhetorics reach toward disidentification, transformation, adjustment, and appreciation. This is to say that feminist rhetorics are connected to Euro-centric rhetorical traditions but aim to disrupt and interject resistance to that tradition, opening intersectional spaces for other(ed) groups to create and validate new approaches to rhetoric. It’s also important to note how feminsit rhetorical theory draws on other critical theories of rhetoric. In particular, it draws on de-colonial theories.
De-colonial critical theory is framework that examines how coloniality persists today. As a way of doing, it speaks from local and regional experience. It evokes the question: what if decolonization was possible? This is radically different from post-colonial theory which examines the impact of colonial forces, and largely sees colonialism as something of the past. In “Introduction: Hopes and Inventions: The Possibility of Decolonial Options” Juan Garcia and Damian Baca “provide a framework for those researchers, educators, and students encountering the language and practice of decoloniality for the first time” (5) and focus on a vision forward in rhetoric and writing which enacts hope. A primary argument for Garcia and Baca is that rhetoric must resist discourses of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ because the creation of modernity rhetorically empowers (and entangles) coloniality. Modernity as an articulation of progress, liberation, or development blames the “other” for not catching up. Instead, they note how our field should instead “argue for sustained recognition of indigenous struggles and for inclusion of indigenous intellectual legacies into research, teaching, and institutional and community practices” (34) As well, we should “realize colonization is not only genealogy; for some colonization still takes place everyday” (35). Decolonial theory is particularly important to my own research because my participants live in an area that was first colonized by Spanish and later by the mining corporations. As practical options for hope, my research requires me to hold historical texts accountable for their intent and damage, understand that archives are premised on Western imperialism, actively work toward dismantling language hierarchies, and locate indigenouse knowledge production and meaning-making within the area. I do not want my research to contribute to further colonization of the area.
One important tool for de-colonial thought is the concept of de-linking as outlined by Walter Mignolo. De-linking is the act of rejecting the idea that all people have to function under the influence of nation-states, or participate in the global market, or conceive of themselves as citizens. In some ways, de-linking is a radical rethinking of the rhetorical (and academic) canon. Mignolo writes, “Decolonial thinking does not appear yet, not even in the most extreme leftist publications. And the reason is that decolonial thinking is not leftist, but rather another thing entirely: it is a de-linking from the modern, political episteme articulated as right, center, and left; it is an opening towards another thing, on the march, searching for itself in the difference” (50). Such a re-thinking of citizenship opens up space for ways of being and thinking outside of the Rhetoric of Modernity and Logic of Coloniality.
One example of de-linking as I have seen in scholarship is the radical rejection of institutional approval for research as outlined by the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Project and Archive. Digital humanity scholars, María Cotera and Linda Garcia Merchant, rejected the ideas of hosting their archive at the Universities to maintain participant and researcher control of their archives. While it took them several years to get funding and research credit for their work, their de-linking of the archive resulted in an archive that empowers the people it documents. This idea of empowering historical colonized people is a major value for de-colonial theories.
I often cite Tuck and Yang as the de-colonial theorists that most influence my own research. They outline three pillars of knowledge for indiginous-informed, de-colonial thought:
The subaltern can speak, but is only invited to speak her/our pain
There are some forms of knowledge that the academy doesn’t deserve
Research may not be the intervention that is needed
In the Euro-centric framework for research, the academy has taken a removed observer approach to research which often focuses on retelling narratives of pain. They highlight damage rather than innovation. This is not to say that we should overlook pain. However, the academy should shift the focus on the systems that oppress and create violence, inequity, and injustice. I’ve been working with Jenny Edbauer for a while now; I own her book Distant Publics, and I have found it helpful for thinking about crises, places and communities. It’s not hard to trace the relationship between her work and mine—urban development destroys the environment to put up buildings for profit, and mining companies destroy the environment to make commercial products for profit—and all of this affects the community. Since being introduced to Tuck and Yang, I have pushed back against Edbauer Rice’s focus on pain through what she calls “injury claims.” As an outsider of the community, I think it is more helpful to focus on resilience to injury and innovation.
Also important to de-colonial theory is acknowledging that there are some forms of knowledge the academy doesn’t deserve. As researchers, we should be aware of when NOT to document something for the sake of research. Tuck and Yang explain how communities may give us information or materials “because research is a human activity, and we make meaningful relationships with participants in our work” and our job as a researcher is to think through the complexities of consent to use that data. They remark that just because an individual holds the data does not mean they have the consent to share it on behalf of a whole community.
Finally, Tuck and Yang remark that research is a colonizing force, and we often try to expand the realm of what is considered research—art, poetry, family histories. They explain “when we see something that needs attention, resources, critique, or intercession, our initial inclination may be to conduct research on it. We generally do research to meet an unmet need. Yet there are far more instances than are commonly realized in which research is not the most useful or appropriate intervention” (236). For example, research should not be used to legitimize community knowledge or to convince a community of a different stance than they hold. Finally, research is not the intervention needed if communities or participants refuse or demonstrate hesitancy. As rhetoricians, it’s our obligation to respect the right to refuse being studied. For many years, Eurocentric conceptions of rhetoric have imposed their own morality onto the study of other people. As we move toward other/ed rhetorics, it’s essential that we both open the possibility understanding one another and respect the boundaries of other cultural, racial, and gendered discursive practices.
While this list of Other/ed rhetorical theories is not exhaustive, the last critical theory I want to discuss is the ecological approach to rhetorical theory. The ecological rhetorical approach theorizes rhetorics, especially public rhetorics, as circulating—moving, changing, adapting—acknowledging elements of rhetoric outside of the control of people. The ecological approach analyzes effects, enachments, and events (Edbauer 9). Jenny Edbauer Rice points out how Eurocentric approaches to rhetoric over simplify communication “often represented through triangulated terms send, receiver, text” (6), but these models fail to account for the dimensions to circulation of rhetorics over time. One example of this in my research dissertation is the Kneeling Nun, a rock formation in the mountains near the mining pit. Local residents call it the Kneeling Nun because from the angle of the former town, it looks like a woman kneeling in front of an altar. The land was originally Warm Spring Apache land before the murder of Mangas Coloradas, and this rock formation was even of great significance before the Spanyards started mining for copper and zinc. Before it became the Kneeling Nun, it was known as La Aguja (the needle), likely because it was viewed from a different angle before the town was developed. The legend of the Kneeling Nun tells the story of a woman who moved to the area in 1736. She devoted her life to God and became a nun, but renounced her vows to marry a handsome Spanish soldier. When she realized her error, she climbed the mountain and was turned to stone as she knelt in prayer. What did this rock formation symbolize before the late 1700s?
Edbaur Rice explains “Rather than primarily speaking of Rhetoric through the terministic lens of conglomerated elements, look towards a framework of affective ecologies that recontextualizes rhetorics in their temporal historical and lived fluxes (9). Theorizing about the monolith through the lens of rhetorical ecology enriches my conceptual model by helping me understand how publics emerge and interact across time and space. As rhetoricians, thinking through ecologies helps us witness and understand how certain messages accrete, transform, are appropriated by other groups.
Such ecological theories of rhetoric are enriched when combined with an indigneous framework for understanding ecology. In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Kimmerer explains how we should feel grateful to more than the people around us. This ecological approach also necessitates an awareness of the natural world: the trees, the birds, the water. Such a material approach decentralizes humans in the study of the rhetoric of things. and it acknowledges the need to expand our ‘triangulated terms’ to acknowledge “all who sustain us” (110). This an indigenous, ecological theory combats Euro-centric individualism by teaching there by Through the act of giving thanks, the indigneous children of her tribe learn that humans are not more important than plants and animals. Indiginous wisdom recognizes interdependence with the other living things around us and teaches the act of being thankful for a complete ecology.
It is important to acknowledge that many of these rhetorical approaches to theory overlap. Depending on the goals and learning of any given scholar, a reader will find traces of various theories within their work. In “Gifts, Ancestors, and Relations: Notes Toward an Indigenous New Materialism” Jennifer Clary-Lemon draws on the writing of Kimmerer. She writes writes:
One of the most valuable re-examinations of the way that we relate to/with non-human others can be found with the idea of the gift. What I especially like about the idea of the gift is that it has a fundamentally material bent: gifts are knowable as things. They are also objects of relation that speak new ways of thinking. (n.p.)
while the neatly situates her works in new materialist thought (the study of things), her work is also ecological in that outlines our obligation to analyze our relationships and communications with “non-human others.” Clary-Lemon explains how gifts create reciprocal relationships, and they also create obligations. When we study—for example—a forest fire that forces people and animals to move, we Indigenous Knowledge would have us see it as a gift. Although a terrible, unwanted gift, see it as a gift obligates us to “work to know both the givers and when something is given as we contend with suffering and difficulty.” Like the work of Edbaur, Clary-Lemon concept of gift-giving breaks the dimensions of time when studying rhetoric. We acknowledge gifts from the past to the present or from the present to the future.
Perhaps what Clary-Lemon asserts most breaks away from the Euro-centri conceptualizations of rhetoric is our willingness to select different ancestors. While she acknowledges the work of Bruno Latour and Deleuze provides us with a framework for new materialism, Clary-Lemon encourages New materialists to give credit to Indigenous Knowledge for its insights on rhetorical theory by citing other scholars—indigenous scholars. She writes: “citation lists are gifts that we carry forward in ways that distribute the agency of a sole author, perhaps even decentralize who is speaking at any one time” (n.p). During my first year in this program, I attempted to write a term paper without citing any white men. I recall a conversation with a peer about this challenge. He asked “Aristotle called it rhetoric. If you are defining it without his influence, why call it rhetoric at all?” To this Ellen Cushman responds:
When we fail to consider the perspectives of people outside of the academy [outside of the white, Euro-centric scholars who founded our field], we overlook valuable contributions to our theory building. Without a praxis that moves between community and university, we risk not only underestimating our students’ pre-existing critical consciousness, but we also risk reproducing the hegemonic barriers separating the university from the community. That is, we become guilty of applying our theories from the sociological “top-down,” instead of informing our theories from the “bottom-up.”
When I tried to write a term paper using only women, trans folks, and people of color. Through this process I learned an important discursive practice for honoring scholars and systems of thought beyond those of the Greeks or Eurocentric perspectives. When we choose the people we cite, we lift up their ideas and give them credit. When we only cite white, cisgender people, we reinforce the academy as dominating, colonizing force.
Clary-Lemon, Jennifer. “Gifts, Ancestors, and Relations: Notes Toward an Indigenous New Materialism.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing and Culture. Issue 30. 2019. http://enculturation.net/gifts_ancestors_and_relations.
Cushman, Ellen. “The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 47, no. 1, Feb., 1996, https://www.jstor.org/stable/358271. Accessed 15 March. 2022.
Edbauer, Jenny. “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Vol. 35, no. 4, Fall 2005. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40232607. 19 Jan. 2021.
Garcia, Juan & Baca, Damian. “Introduction: Hopes and Inventions: The Possibility of Decolonial Options.” Rhetorics Elsewhere and Otherwise. NCTE, 2020, pp. 15 – 48.
Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope. Southern Illinois University Press, 2018, pp. 49 -95. (pdf)
Mignolo, Walter. “Epistemic Disobedience and the Decolonial Option: A Manifesto.” TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, vol. No. 2: 2011.
Powell, Malea. “This is a Story about a Belief . . .” Rhetoric Review, vol. 30, no. 2, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2011.551497. Accessed 20 Jan. 2021.
Rice, Jenny. Distant Publics: Development Rhetorics and the Subject of Crisis. U of Pittsburg Press, 2012.
Royster and Kirsch. Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.
Royster, Jacqueline Jones, and Gesa E. Kirsch. Feminist Rhetorical Practices : New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uaz/detail.action?docID=1354446.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “R-Words: Refusing Research.” Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014.
Based on your reading, how is memory studies constructed through the writing of white scholarship, and in what ways is this limiting? How can the field of rhetoric address the monovocality of memory studies?
As I was (re)writing my specialization statement for the third time, I had my partner review it for mistakes and feedback. I’ll admit, I was looking for typographical errors, so I was thrown off when he started laughing and proclaimed one of the claims I made was racist.
“Perhaps more importantly, Halbwachs theorizes that the act of forgetting is a result of being cut off from a community” (Lycke).
I didn’t see it. I read the line again, and I could not figure out what was racist about it. But then we reviewed my annotated bibliography on memory studies. To be sure, every one of the scholars I cited was a cis, white man, and most of my sources were ‘older.’ The flagstone text for collective memory, On Collective Memory, by Maurice Halbrachs was written in 1942, a time when theory could develop out of a person’s mind and without regard for methods or methodologies. Today, we still cite this text because it has a lot of important observations about the social construction of memory. He is arguably the first scholar to talk about memory as a collective force. However, it’s also important to address that Halbwachs writes about his own experiences without a thought for how other people and communities might account differently for the function of memory.
A recent picture with my partner, Darren. We were walking “the loop” in Tucson with our dogs.
I admit, this conversation made me hyper-aware of my race. My partner is a first generation Mexican American, and I am white. As such, I have to work harder to deliberately understand the ways in which my field (and subfield) has been constructed through the writing of white scholarship. This essay is an attempt to do that work.
John Bodnar’s is one of the most widely cited rhetoricians engaged in memory scholarship. He defines public memory as “a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help a public or society understand both its past, present, and by implication, it’s future” (15). In all of the scholarship I have read thus far, we agree that public memory is as much about the anxieties and tensions of the present as it is about the past.
As one example of this, consider how in September of 2020 Former President Donald Trump threatened to pull funding from California schools that teach the New York Times’ 1619 Project. The 1619 Project is a national memory project that “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative” (The New York Times Magazine). Such a project recovers a history that has been largely covered up and ignored by the dominant narratives of US history.
As an attempt to uphold “patriotic education” president Trump signed the 1776 Commission executive order. In his comments, he called critical race theory and the 1619 project a “crusade against American history” and “toxic propaganda” that would “destroy the country.” This conversation about the memory of America’s foundational years is a clear example of how public memory reflects the already present anxieties about race. Bodnar explains “public memory remains a product of elite manipulation, symbolic interaction, and contested discourse. Leaders continue to use the past to foster patriotism and civic duty…(20). No doubt, President Trump held the elite power (and funding) to manipulate the memory of US history. But while memory can unite us, with a common set of beliefs and ideas about the past, failure to recognize other “bod[ies] of beliefs and ideas about the past” can also divide us.
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[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” admin_preview_bg=”] Bodnar’s work is ground-breaking in understanding public memory as an act of Nation Making, but his perspective as a white man limits what we can do with his scholarship alone. In his theories of memory making, Bodnar divides people into two classes, cultural leaders who “come from a broad group of middle-class professionals—government officials, editors, lawyers, clerics, teachers, military officers, and small business man” (15) and ordinary people “the rest of society” (16). While not intentional, Bodnar points out how cultural leaders—those with the power to manipulate memory—are marked by their whiteness. While not all government officials, editors, lawyers, clerics, teachers, military officers, and small businessmen are white, these positions are still predominantly held by white workers. People of color disproportionately fall in what we consider the working class and hold jobs in service or hard labor. Bodnar goes on to explain how ordinary people are “more likely to honor pioneer ancestors rather than founding fathers” (16). By designating ordinary people as descendents of pioneers, it’s clear that Bodnar does not imagine people of color in his concept of “ordinary.”
Perhaps this is because historically speaking, public memory making (at least on the national level) was reserved for the white narrative. In “Memory” Amalia Mesa-Bains says “our collective memory has been suppressed by educational institutions and the mass media. As a result, much of the communal work we have done is to inspire people to recall stories, narratives, and songs. This kind of work also positions our community to demand accountability from public institutions, like museums and granting agencies” (101). Countless articles discuss the role institutions play in suppressing the memory of othered groups (see de-colonial critical theory). What I appreciate about Mesa-Bain’s testimony is that she discusses cultural rituals which inspire people of color (specifically Chicanas) to demand change from those institutions.
In “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression” Derrida rightfully notes that those who control the archives are also control the public memory. While his lecture focuses on the archives, the same can be said about museums (Weiser, Dickinson et.al), and monuments (Flores, Bodnar). Derrida says:
The citizens who thus held and signified political power were considered to possess the right to make or to represent the law. On account of their publicly recognized authority, it is at their home, in that place which is their house (private house, family house, or employee’s house.” (9)
Furthermore, he notes how the goals of public memory (at least by his definition) is to achieve absolute monovocality:
Consignation aims to coordinate a single corpus, in a system or a synchrony in which all the elements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration. In an archive, there should not be any absolute dissociation, any heterogeneity or secret which could separate (secernere), or partition, in an absolute manner. (10)
In analyzing institution power, Derrida explains how the role of the archive is to create one memory. In his perspective, there is no room for multiple narratives because archives should unite us into a single group. Such an assimilationist approach to public memory is problematic. Nevertheless, Archive Fever is still widely cited in rhetorical memory studies because of the way it connects power to public memory.
Another widely cited (also white) scholar is Pierre Nora who gives us the term memory site. Nora actually says the opposite—that memory is important so that we CAN disagree with the past. He says:
Our interest in lieux de memoire where memory crystallizes and secretes itself has occurred at a particular historical moment, a turning point where consciousness of a break with the past is bound up with the sense that memory has been torn-but torn in such a way as to pose the problem of the embodiment of memory in certain sites where a sense of historical continuity persists.
This is just to say that we become interested in memory cites when the people experience a change in consciousness, when the people do not recognize themselves in places that represent their history.
Nora defines memory sites as the embodiments of memorial consciousness, a knowledge he says modern society is lacking. Unlike his predecessors, Nora considers how memory affects other groups (colonized minorities, diaspora Jews, peasants). However, his understanding of commemoration is still limiting, as he says these memory sites are:
“embodiments of a memorial consciousness that has barely survived…They make their appearance by virtue of the deritualization of our world-producing, manifesting, establishing, constructing, decreeing, and maintaining by artifice and by will a society deeply absorbed in its own transformation and renewal, one that inherently values the new over the ancient, the young over the old, the future over the past.”
To contextualize this criticism of our memory sites, Nora believes that we now live in the age of history, which is defined facts, a linear understanding of time, and a singular narrative. Therefore, he believes that memory sites are an artifice, a tribute to values we no longer hold, and that commemoration is an act of solidifying history more than an act of remembering. So while much of what Nora says about the places where memory attaches itself, his cynicism just is not true for most groups of people. As scholar of public memory, I believe that commemoration is alive and powerful.
By listing the above scholars, I hope to illuminate some of the limitations of theorizing about memory through one lens—whiteness. I do not fault these scholars nor do I want to eliminate the knowledge they have contributed to memory studies, but I understand how this list of citations by themselves can exclude other perceptions of public memory and ways of commemorating culture. I hear Jennifer Clary-Lemon’s call to “embrace a decolonizing ethic by claiming different ancestors.” What happens if instead of defaulting John Bodnar’s definition of memory, I chose another scholar. Inevitably, there are plenty of other scholars who have defined public memory, but it takes more work to seek them out.
Claiming a Different Lineage
What if I begin defining memory through bell hooks, for example? She says:
“For Blacks, Chicano/as, and Native Americans, memory allows us to resist and to heal: we know ourselves through the act of remembering. When we lose sight of who we are, when we lose touch, when we lose our minds, we find ourselves through remembering, through talking cures, which are reenactments of remembering. And memory becomes a thread that can bend, bind, and gather broken bits and pieces of ourselves.” (Mesa-Bains 102)
Contrasted with the above conceptions of memory which highlight manipulation and control, hooks provide us with a very different version of memory—one that still looks back at the past, to connect to the present, but one that looks inward at the self. To heal, she explains, we must find our roots. By remembering where we come from, we can mend or re-member ourselves.
In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Kimmerer provides another compelling definition worth exploring memory studies. She writes:
Ceremony is a vehicle for belonging—to a family, to a people, and to the land. At last, I thought that I understood the offering to the gods of Tahawus. It was, for me, the one thing that was not forgotten, that which could not be taken by history: the knowing that we belonged to the land, that we were the people who knew how to say thank you. It welled up from a deep blood memory that the land, the lakes, and the spirit had held for us. (37)
First, this definition is the hopeful foil to Pierre Nora’s argument that we are constantly less and less concerned with rituals. It counters the idea that we are only concerned with world-building, and not our actual connection with memory. Kimmerer goes on to say “That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine, the coffee to a prayer” (37). Rather than seeing places or things as sites of memory. Kimmerer contends that mundane ceremonies, like pouring out the first bit of the coffee from the coffee pot, are ceremonies that connect us to our cultural memory.
Secondly, Kimmerer defines blood memory. She implies that people have inherent memories because they come from a line of people who are connected to a land. Particularly relevant to indigenous people who have been displaced and dispossessed, this memory cannot be taken by history. In On Collective Memory, Halbwachs theorizes that if a child abruptly separated from his family “transported to a country where his language was not spoken, where neither his appearance of people and places, nor their costumes, resemble in any way that which was familiar to him” that child would be cut off from his memory. Without pictures or other people, the child could not even access “uncertain, incomplete memories” (37-38). If this ‘thought experiment’ is unsettling to you, it’s probably because in 1942 (when it was written), indigenous children were actively being taken from their homes and placed into white, English speaking boarding schools. At the time this book was written, even if children were given the opportunity to completly assimilate and become White Americans, racial segregation would have allowed them to become second-class citizens at best. Rather than creating a new, anglicized memory for these children, cutting their access to cultural memory was just an act of domination and control.
Mesa-Bains, describes similar acts to dominante the memory of Chicanx and Mestizo people. She says “they renamed the plants, the animals, and the places to suit themselves and to assuage their own memory and loss as invaders who had come this great distance. And they sought to perpetuate the belief that we had no memory” (103) However, the conceptualization of blood memory resists control and erasure by affirming that the memory is in your blood and your relationship with the land. When a child of eight or nine year old is “transported to a country where his language was not spoken” that vehicle of belonging can never be taken. Cultural memory is deep in your blood, and it emerges in the smallest daily rituals.
By claiming new ancestors, we bring about varying dimensions of public memory which help us understand how people connect to memory and how memory serves them. But this is not the only way rhetoric can address the monovocality of memory studies. We can also push back against the idea of a singular memory.
Embracing Polyvocality
One idea that has changed the way I look at both history and memory is the concept of Spatial Imaginations as defined by critical geographer Doreen Massey. In her 2005 book For Space, Massey reimagines how to examine space and its relation to the way we think, particularly about globalization and ‘the other’ in Western society. She posits that instead of thinking about space as a surface upon which people exist—and instead of equating space to a single timeline—we look at space as a “meeting-up of histories.” This means that many memories are true at the same time, even in the same place, public memory need not be constructed on the erasure of other memories.
This idea of the “meeting up” rather than overlapping memories is complicated by Iris D. Ruiz explains that dominant historical narratives are still important because they inform the consciousness of minority people. In “Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and other Ethnic Minorities, Ruiz outlines a critical historical pedagogy. Drawing from critical race theory (CRT) and post-structuralism, Ruiz imagines how dominant narratives of history (memory) can be a point of invention or resistance for other groups. She says, “Interestingly, these narratives and the discursive fields to which they belong, in effect, determine who will identify with them, who will be encompassed in them, and who will be marginalized from them…questioning of the process of historical continuity in mind is crucial to understanding the constructed nature of one’s reality” (30-31). While an often proposed solution to fighting master narratives is to erase the dominant historical memory (like the removal of confederate monuments), Ruiz posits that another solution is to use these memory sites to interrogate dominant cultural memory. She emphasizes “the possibility that discursive structures provide for agency in the same way they provide for limitations to experience…Critical Historiography, allows silenced voices to express experience in a critical, credible, and scholarly manner suitable for an analysis of the experiences” (33).
Nancy Small presents a similar idea in “From Commemoration to Co-Memoration as Feminist Practice” as she defines co-memoration. She says, “co-memoration makes space for many voices. In other words, co-memoration invites talking back. Such dialogue can take place in different and multiple spaces.” Small highlights (as does Halbwachs), the social nature of remembering. But she also brings about the idea of invited resistance. This is an important stance white scholars can take to promote polyvocality in public memory. She goes on to say “Rather than assuming our experiences align with a master narrative (as occurs in masculinist commemorative practice), co-memorative activities should court disruption of narrative comfort by seeking out new viewpoints and assessments.” This is not to say that such work is easy! It was not easy to swallow the criticism from my partner that my specialization statement was racist, especially as most of my research participants are people of color. At first, I took it personally. Am I racist? As I thought about it, I realized how this disruption—a gap in what I thought I knew—represented an opportunity to expand my understanding of public memory. Tending to the whiteness of rhetorical memory is important thought-work for moving forward with my dissertation.
We cannot erase nor ignore the whitewashed history of rhetoric. But overcoming it requires a good amount of rhetorical listening, and explicit scholarly interest in listening within contemporary rhetoric and composition studies (Ratcliffe 18). Ratcliffe explains all of the biases that tend to make us (especially white) rhetoricians bad listeners. 1) We have been trained to study Western culture which values writing and speaking over listening. 2) Gender, race, and class biases push us to “speak up” more than “listen better” 3) privilege allows us to focus on what we already see which creates occuluar centrism, or cultural blinders (citing Martin Jay). I want to end with Ratcliff’s explanation of rhetorical listening which I believe is a key tool for white scholars, like me, attempting to tend to the whiteness of memory studies. She says:
For when listening to a divided logos, we do not simply read for what we agree with or challenge, as is the habit of academic reading (in its multiple guises). Instead, we choose to listen for the exiled excess and contemplate its relation to our own culture and ourselves. Such listening does not presume a naive, relativistic empathy…but rather an ethical responsibility to argue for what we deem fair and just. Such listening, I argue, may help people invent, interpret, and ultimately judge differently if perhaps we can hear things we cannot see.
When we hear our colleagues or students who disagree with the culture and direction of our scholarship, we are obligated to reflect on how we are implicated. Rhetorical listening requires scholars of rhetoric to consider how we participate or condone—even if unknowing—circular oppressive practices. This intimate reflection invites the resistance necessary to allow for polyvolcal rhetorics of memory.
Works Cited
Bodnar, John. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton UP, 1992.
Clary-Lemon, Jennifer. “Gifts, Ancestors, and Relations: Notes Toward an Indigenous New Materialism.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing and Culture. Issue 30. 2019. http://enculturation.net/gifts_ancestors_and_relations.
Derrida, Jacques and Eric Prenowitz. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression” The Johns Hopkins University Press. Vol. 25, no. 2, summer 2005, pp. 9-63.
Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Translated by F. J. Ditter and V. Y. Ditter in 1980. U of Chicago P. 1942.
hooks, bell and Amalia Mesa-Bains. “Memory.” Homegrown : Engaged Cultural Criticism. South End P, 2006, 101-111.
Nora, Pierra. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, no. 26, 1989, pp 7-24. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/2928520
Ratcliffe, Krista. “Defining Rhetorical Listening.” Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Southern Illinois University Press, 2005, pp. 17 – 47.
Ruiz, Iris. “Post-Structuralism, Historical Theory, and Critical Race Theory: A Pyramid for Critical Historical Analysis.” Reclaiming Composition for Chicano/as and Other Ethnic Minorities. Palgrave Macmillan, 1st ed. 2016, 27-39.
Trump, Donald. White House History Conference, 17 Sept. 2020, National Archives Museum, Washington DC. Youtube, uploaded by Trump Whitehouse Archived 17 Sept. 2020. https://youtu.be/7WGvn6N1qPE
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Developed and distributed a survey to Foundations Writing instructors to collect and analyze feedback for suggested revisions
Met with directors of assessment, general education, circular & instruction materials, diversity & equity, and various other stakeholders to identify priority revisions.
Lead weekly meetings to collaborate with a team of 3 editors.
Wrote 3 new chapters to correspond with a change in programatic student learning objectives: “Reflection,” “Reflective Writing,” and “Portfolios”
Solicited and selected student sample writing for inclusion in the textbook. Collaborated with 22 students to include their writings as sample texts.
Reduced the text of the textbook the program by writing alt-text and image descriptions and eliminating included copywritten materials costing more than $150
Collaborated with the publishing team at Hayden-McNair to meet all deadlines for delivering the manuscript.
Added book content which student cultural and support resources and a land acknowledgment satement.
Developed end-of-year reflection for editors to determine how to present the new edition to instructors in the Fall.
Served as a voting member of the Foundations Writing Administrative Council (WRiPaca) to make important programmatic decisions.
Met bi-weekly with the chair and other members of both subcommittees (assessment; curricular and instructional materials) to work on the tasks charged by WriPaca
Assisted in developing a system for coding and analyzing student writing program portfolios.
Formulated hypotheses about how to improve the curriculum and/or teaching strategies based on data from portfolio scoring.
Collaborated with a team to develop an additional programmatic Student Learning Objective; co-wrote language to be included in instructional materials.
Researched trends in OER (open educational resources) to set goals for programmatic implementation of OER.
Crowdsources a list of OER materials and organized them by topic for instructional use.
Served as the official Graduate and Professional Student Council representative for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Met with constituents at least once monthly to hear concerns and advocate on behalf of students.
Served as an advisory on several campus-wide council groups including the icourse fee committee which allocates funding to campus technology and educational resources and the Student discipline hearing board.
Attended 5 student discipline hearings to analyze a student appeal and offer recommendations to the dean of students.
Collaborated to plan and facilitate Graduate student Appreciation week.
Score and provide feedback to research and professional development grant applications.
Campaigned to video record all GPSC meetings and post them publicly for constituent review; motion passed.
This post is to let you know that my first film, “This was Santa Rita,” will be screening at The Loft Cinema (for free), alongside other student films. You can watch it here: https://loftcinema.org/film/whats-up-docs/
This is the first film I have ever made, and I have learned a lot along the way. I learned to opporate a camera, the basics of film editing, structures of film that are different from writing. Overall, what a wonderful experience to take on during covid-19. It’s such a collaborative process that I actually felt connected to my community during this time of isolation. I worked with archivitsts at New Mexico State as well as Utah State University. Tucson local actors (and my neighboors) volunteered to do dramatic readings of the accounts. My friend and collegue, Kathleen,went to Grant County with me to shoot some footage. We shot a lot of bad footage, but thanks to her, we got SOME good footage. My professor Jacob Bricca spent hours giving me feedback and showing me how to use the software. I completely changed the vision of my film twice! I feel so greateful to those who shared their stories with me and to those who helped me put those stories into film.
I made many discoveries along the way; first, that I love working with film. I hope I can continue this project and theorize more about the role of film in its relationship with history and memory. I want to learn more about using film as a method in rhetorical studies. I also found bits of the story needing more explantation. Why is the Kneeling Nun so important to this community? What does the Society of Persons Born in Space do for them? How do women remember the town? How have they managed to remain a close-knit community over the years. I hope I will be granted the opportunity soon interview Santa Rita residents and learn more about what the history of the town means to them.
Baker, E. (2007). On Strike and on Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War Era. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Gardner, R.W. (1991). Santa Rita under the kneeling nun. Self-published. Santa Rita Archives, Silver City Public Library, Silver City, Nm. Accessed Nov. 2018.
Huggard, CJ., & Humble, T.M. (2012). Santa Rita Del Cobre: A Copper Mining Community in New Mexico. Denver: UP of Colorado.
Kennecott Copper Corporation. (March-April 1965).Pit expansion will need Santa Rita Townsite. Chinorama,pp. 1-5. Santa Rita Archives, Silver City Public Library, Silver City, Nm. Accessed Nov. 2018.
Siegfried, S. (13 July 1996). Neighborhood thrived in Santa Rita community. Silver City Daily Press, pp. 3-4. Santa Rita Archives, Silver City Public Library, Silver City, Nm. Accessed Nov. 2018.
Solórzano, D.G. & Yosso, T.J. (Feb 2002). Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23-44.
Steinberg, S. L. (2003). Santa Rita, New Mexico: Community report. Humboldt State University, Department of Sociology. Santa Rita Archives, Silver City Public Library, Silver City, Nm. Accessed Nov. 2018.
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” admin_preview_bg=”] In this course, students develop reading and writing skills for use other personal, professional, and academic contexts by analyzing, summarizing, and interpreting fiction and nonfiction texts.
The course uses a genre-based rhetorical framework to situate writing as a social act. Students analyze audiences, contexts, purposes, mediums, and technologies and apply this knowledge to their reading and writing. Students also consider how visual and audio modes contribute to the composition of a text.
Analyze, compose, and reflect on arguments in a variety of genres, considering the strategies, claims, evidence, and various mediums and technologies that are appropriate to the rhetorical situation
Describe the social nature of composing, particularly the role of discourse communities at the local, national, and international level
Analyze and describe the value of incorporating various languages, dialects, and registers in your own and others’ texts
Overview
This sequence introduces students to the basic rhetorical language of the course: genre, audience, purpose, discourse community, mode. Students explore their discourse communities as a facet of their identity. They begin the semester writing a memoir about a time when they felt like an outsider from a discourse community. Then, they create a usage guide about a discourse community they belong to. The usage guide introduces students to the concepts of purpose and modes. Finally, students create a website profile of that discourse community, selecting their own audience, purpose, and angle.
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Describe the social nature of composing, particularly the role of discourse communities at the local, national, and international level
Improve fluency in the dialect of Standardized Written American English at the level of the sentence, paragraph, and document
Analyze and describe the value of incorporating various languages, dialects, and registers in a text
Analyze and describe the writing and research conventions of an academic field in order to understand the different ways of creating and communicating knowledge
Overview
In this sequence, students learn more about the discourse and genres used in their fields of study. First, students arrange an interview with a field professional to ask about various types of writing in the field. Students must prepare interview questions, set up the interview, and learn to record notes during the interview. Then, students analyze a document from that field analyzing any jargon as well as explaining how the parts of the genre contribute to the purpose and context of the genre. Student cite this essay using the formatting style of their field.
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Analyze, compose, and reflect on arguments in a variety of genres, considering the strategies, claims, evidence, and various mediums and technologies that are appropriate to the rhetorical situation
Use multiple approaches for planning, researching, prewriting, composing, assessing, revising, editing, proofreading, collaborating, and incorporating feedback in order to make compositions stronger in various mediums and using multiple technologies
Use writing and research as a means of discovery to examine personal beliefs in the context of multiple perspectives and to explore focused research questions through various mediums and technologies
Overview
In this unit, students gain complete control of their composition. They learn how to keep a topic or message in-tact when the rest of the rhetorical situation changes. First, students write a manifesto explain their core beliefs and explore how their beliefs were shaped. Then, they must present this information to an audience of peers using the medium of video. Finally, they select an audience they think they can impact. With an audience in mind, students create any genre and medium to best reach their intended audience.
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Analyze, compose, and reflect on arguments in a variety of genres, considering the strategies, claims, evidence, and various mediums and technologies that are appropriate to the rhetorical situation
Self-evaluate development as a writer over the course of the semester and describe how composing in multiple genres and mediums using various technologies can be applied in other contexts to advance personal and academic goals
Use writing and research as a means of discovery to examine personal beliefs in the context of multiple perspectives and to explore focused research questions through various mediums and technologies.
Overview
Students use a blog to document their learning journey throughout the semester. They complete weekly entries that allow them to explore what they are learning in a low-stakes, reflective space. As they do so, students comment and offer feedback to their peers, learn how to use various technologies, and incorporate design and various media into their portfolio.
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We stood silently in the Capilla, the weight of generations of prayers layered on one another pressed down on our shoulders. Jesus stared through us. Three hundred votives flickered in the darkness of the hand-placed stones that built up the walls, and prayers written on notebook paper stuffed the fissures of the hidden fortress, and picture of young boy printed from a laser printer and the blue ink scratched, “Do not remove until June 2007.”
Overhead, we heard the bulldozers pushing mounds of earth precariously across the 45-degree angled surface of Hanover Mountain. A crane planted itself firmly at the top, some 80-feet lower now than where the 10-foot wooden cross once stood. It hauled the marrow of the earth up over the hill and into the unknown. Fierro was once a lively mining town. Now it is a name on a map along an unmarked road marred by the decaying remains of homes. The only building preserved against dry rot is El Sancuario de la Pieta at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. People still travel twice per month to attend mass at St. Anthony’s. We had arrived right in time for the ceremony, but the doors were locked and the only chorus to be heard rumbled from the stomach of the mine–the mountain shaved to its core.
“There is no church this Sunday,” Zakery said, “They’re moving the mountain.”
This newest eviction in the long line of environmental injustices in the Grant County mining district. The mine that swallowed the town of Santa Rita as its pit expanded was about to engorge the memorial shrine of Fierro too.
The Shrine of Santa Rita sits tucked in a battlefield of dying towns at the intersection of New Mexico highways 152 and 356. In exchange for their loss, the residents of Santa Clara were gifted a 900-square foot lot to fence in their refugee relics: Our Lady of Guadalupe stands in here a terrarium holding a rosary and overlooking a memorial to Grant County Veterans. She herself stands as a memorial praying for the Santa Rita refugees whose lives and homes destroyed. Across the pews, looking south toward exposed rainbow earth, a plaque reads:
In 1960, Kennecott Copper Corporation notified the residents of the town of Santa Rita that they had to evacuate by 1970 due to mining expansion, all houses, buildings, and the Santa Rita Catholic church were either moved or demolished. The Statue of Santa Rita was taken the village of central Miguel Ojinaga. Angel Alvarado and Moy Gonzales asked Kennecott for a section of land, and the statue was brought back with the blessing of the diocesan of El Paso and with the help of other Santa Rita residents. The shrine was built here.
The plaque speaks in half-truths about the devastations of the people, as though the plot of land smaller than the average backyard is a gift. The residents of Santa Rita did not evacuate, an optional migration in the event of natural disaster, they were evicted by their Land Lord. As the earth literally fell out from under their feet took, not only where they lived but where they went for spiritual rejuvenation, citizens of Santa Rita were left with nothing. They waited and watched the physical destruction of their town, only to see a symbol of their faith carried off in the process. Our Lady of Guadalupe, a cultural symbol for the Mexicano people sought refuge in El Paso waiting out her trial for permission to return. Now, she mourns over all of the lives lost in Grant County. The physical lives of veterans and the envision of life as it once was. Soon there would be a new memorial statue to honor the 890 women’s auxiliary who put their lives on the line in 1950 to fight for fair working conditions in the same mine. The Santa Rita shrine is a catch-all sanctuary because it is the untouched slice of a “home” they used to know. It is a cultural artifact of the little bit they could salvage.
As Glenn Albrecht explains in “Solastalgia: A New Concept in Health and Identity” the citizens of Santa Rita grieved as they watched their lands being stripped away. They felt a “relationship between the psychic identity and their home. What these people lacked was the solace of comfort derived from their present relationship to ‘home’.” The destruction of one’s land is the devastation of one’s identity, especially in a mining town where the earth is tied to their culture. The people call themselves the Salt of the Earth, both in reference to their humble nature and their inseparable identity from the ground that provides for them. The paradox of mining is knowing that you make your money exploiting the same resources you depend on for sustenance. Although the company houses did not belong to the people of Santa Rita, the land always did. When the company asserted its power to repossess all of the lands, they left families defenseless–homesick, mourning.
Much like Albrecht notes, “their place-based distress was also connected to a sense of powerlessness and a sense that environmental injustice was being on home.” They watched pit expand to consume their geographic homes, and their vision of home was destroyed as they realize how little power they had over anything. This grief is intensified knowing the Santa Rita citizens where the ones both assaulting and assaulted. They dugs the pit during the day and came home the sleep in houses they would sweep away. They understood that their paychecks would cost the people of Santa Rita their lives as they knew it.
Now Santa Rita is a whisper behind a chain-linked fence, and Fierro is dwindling as the pit runs dry. The only hope of saving the central mining district is mountain-top removal.
Over the last few weeks, I have spent some time bouncing around and interviewing officials from the Department of Cultural Affairs to understand how we can begin designating the Local 890 Union Hall as a historic property. Our team’s mission is to recognize the lives, labor, and leadership of the women and men of Local 890 and celebrate their groundbreaking role in the 1950-1952 Empire Zinc Mine Strike–one of the nation’s most effective and groundbreaking strikes lead by women. In my part on the Salt of the Earth Recovery Project team, I wanted to see what we can do, if anything to implement governmental historic designation. So I started asking questions: Who makes decisions about the designation of a State Historic Site? What is the process of designating a State Historic Site? and What criteria is used to determine when nominating and selecting sites?
What I discovered is that there are more designations for preservation that we should consider beyond State Historic Sites. Some are well-marked by standard operating procedures and legislation, others are governed by state statute. Furthermore, the process of becoming a “State Historic Site” is only partially mapped; and it requires us to work with the community to tell the history of the building through tourism. You find in this report an explanation of the different designation processes and benefits and drawbacks of each. Regardless of the route we pursue in preserving the Local 890 Union Hall, community partnerships, grants for funding, and historic interpretation are essential ingredients.
The Murals on the outside of the Union building depict the importance of the strike within the community.
Salt of the Earth Recovery Project Mission Statement:
The mission of the Salt of the Earth Recovery Project is to recognize the lives, labor, and leadership of the women and men of Local 890 and celebrate their groundbreaking role in the 1950-1952 Empire Zinc Mine Strike.
Vision Statement:
The vision of the Salt of the Earth Recovery Project is to honor the stories of the women and men of Local 890 and to support restoration and preservation of the Local 890 Union Hall in Bayard, New Mexico for the benefit of the local community, the citizens of New Mexico, and the historic memory of the nation.
A few members of our team gather around the bridge where the woman strikers held the line.
Definitions of Designation
At times in my research, I lost track of the terms used for official designation. They are mostly governed by the same entities, the Historic Preservation Division and the Department of Cultural Affairs, but the designations are important to distinguish from one another.
● State Register of Cultural Properties – “This designation provides for the protection of archaeological sites through the creation of a permit process to survey and excavate archaeological sites and unmarked human burials by qualified institutions and established civil and criminal penalties for the looting of archaeological sites and disturbance of unmarked burials. ” This designation is commonly referred to as the State Historic Registry and allows for certain properties to receive state funding in the form of grants for preservation. In addition, it makes the destruction of validation of this property a criminal offense. These properties are not given plaques of any sort.
● National Register of Historic Places – This is a designation of “the nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.” The designation allows an organization to apply for federal funding for the preservation of the property. It also makes the destruction or vandalization of the building a federal offense.
● New Mexico Scenic Historic Markers – These are the markers used to commemorate a historic event or place. They are plaques granted by the Cultural Properties Review Committee, State Historic Preservation Division, and Office of Cultural Affairs. They do not grant any benefit or privilege to the historic site. However, they must be reviewed for accuracy of information and to ensure the marker will not cause harm to the site. The general purpose is to attract highway travelers to read about a point of interest without veering far from the highway. The ladies auxiliary unit of the local 890 already has one of these markers alongside highway 152.
● New Mexico State Historic Site – (Formerly called New Mexico State Monuments) These are registered cultural properties that receive special designation, management, and interpretation services through the Department of Cultural Affairs. They are staffed by the State Parks Service. There are currently only six of these. New Mexico has more than 1,985 prehistoric and historic properties listed in the State Register, but only 6 are State Historic Sites.
● National Historic Landmark – This designation is for “nationally significant historic places designated by the Secretary of the Interior because they possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States.” While over 90,000 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, just over 2600 are National Historic Landmarks.
● Certified Local Government Program (CLG) – This designation assists local governments to develop their own ordinances for demolition and construction within “historical districts.” The goal is to integrate community planning with historic preservation. Only CLGs are eligible for second category grants from the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund.
Recent Discoveries and Progress
Juntos en la Union: Juntos en la Union is a historical society out of Silver City dedicated to “the preservation of The Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Local 890 headquarters” who have already made great strides in the designation process. Unannounced to our team, they begin the preservation efforts of the local 890 union hall. It seems their efforts began with the intention to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the film “Salt of the Earth,” as cited in their letters of support. Between the years 2010 and 2017, the group made great distance to prove the historical significance of the Union hall including:
● A letter of support from the City of Bayard signed by the mayor in May 2010
● A letter of support from the Wisconsin Labor History Society recommending the Union Hall’s designation to the National Register of Historic Places in December 2010
● A letter from New Mexico’s former Governor, Jeff Bingaman in support of preserving the Union Hall in July 2011.
Despite a lack of knowledge within the community, Juntos en le Union’s dedication to the protection of the building resulted in the designation of the union hall a state cultural property in March 2017 with a vote of 48 yeses to 7 nos. The Memorial verifies historical and cultural significance based on:
The Political Significance in History
● The site’s representation of “minority groups’ struggles and triumphs over injustice and discrimination and that [the local 890 union’s] pursuit of happiness guaranteed under the United States Constitution” during and after the 1950-1951 Empire Zinc Strikes
● A historic landmark demonstrating the “struggle of the workers of Local 890 and Ladies Auxiliary 290 against racism, sexism and unjust working conditions”
The Social Significance of the Salt of the Earth Film
● The contribution of the Salt of the Earth film as “one of the first motion pictures to advance the feminist social and political point of view” and the union hall as the primary filming location of the movie
● The novel significance of the film as the only motion picture ever blacklisted in American Film History
● The cultural significance of the Library of Congress’ designation of one of the top 100 most “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” films
The Local and Community Significance of the Building
● A community center where “miners and their families could attend lectures and movies and socialize at dances, bingo parties, wedding, and baptisms, in addition to being used for union business”
● A classic construction representative of New Mexican architecture
National Register of Historic Places
Despite legislative effort in designating the Local 890 Union Hall as a State Cultural Property, it was not recommended as an addition to National Registry of Historic Places. According to State legislature, a property must first receive designation and approval as a State Cultural Property before it is eligible for the National Registry. Generally, the applying organization or individual fills out the two forms together. Upon approval as a State Cultural Property, the Cultural Review Committee may forward the National Application to the National Park Service for further review. Listing the Union Hall on the National registry does little to bring in money for preservation nor interpretation. The main role of the designation is to change the way the community of Bayard perceives its history and historic places.
There are two reasons why I believe the site was not recommended to the National Historic Registry. First, according to the national criteria, a historic site must be at least 50 years old to qualify. When Juntos en La Union began the designation process, 50 years had not yet passed since the end of the Empire Zinc Mine strikes and the filming of the movie. In addition, the application did not situate the historical merit of the building in a larger narrative about the changing social and political climate of the US.; rather it documented the history of the building as stand-alone events. In order to present the union hall as a nationally significant site, we need to connect it to the Hispanic civil rights movement and/or the feminist movement of the era noting how the events of the strike primed other emerging activists and civil assemblies.
Benefits of the National Register:
Tax Credits: The major benefit of the National Historic Landmark designation is a 20% federal income tax credit available for the rehabilitation of historic buildings that produce income. While the union hall does not currently produce income, this tax credit can provide relief for maintenance and preservation of the building once it is open to the community again. In addition, New Mexico’s Historic Preservation Division offers up to half of the rehabilitation costs as a deduction from state income taxes over a period of five years, with a cap of $25,000 per project. The property owner may also qualify for a 3% APR fixed rate loan for any rehabilitation, maintenance, or preservation work.
Federal Grants: Another benefit of the National Historic Registry is the eligibility for grants. Among these grants is the State Historic Preservation Program which allocates more than 54 million dollars each year to match state contributions for the preservation of 20-50 National Registry Historic Sites. This grant is highly competitive.
Application Process:
As the next step in the preservation of the building, this designation would list the property to the public and may encourage tourism to the town of Bayard. While this designation does not automatically issue a plaque, the designation itself emits a certain ethos in advertising that is worth the minimal effort of an application.
As outlined in the HM022 New Mexico State Legislative memorial, I believe the local 890 Union Hall presents a strong case for National Historic Preservation. With the state historic registry application, we already have most of the information required, and the designation process is short–taking an average of 90 days after the completion of the application. The past applications for National Registration are all on file and available on the National Parks Services Website. As models for the application process, The Forty Acres Farm in Delano, California is the historically closest resembling national historic property and provides an example to follow when writing the application. The geographically nearest resembling National Historic property in New Mexico, The Silver City Woman’s Club building, may also serve as a model for writing a “proposed use” statement. Both of these sites are privately owned and designated within the last ten years which means the application process and applications should be similar
Criteria for the National Registry:
Historic significance:
● Empire Zinc Mine Strikes
● Women’s Auxiliary Unit
● Connection to Salt of the Earth
Historic Context:
● Latino American civil rights activism
● American labor movement
● Social and political feminism
Historic Integrity:
● Intact local and historical architecture
● Murals of cultural and local significance
● Location in connection to mines
State Historic Site Designation
The primary benefit of the State Historic site designation is an increase in tourism and recognition of the historical merit of Bayard, the Local 890 Union, and the Empire Zinc mine strikes. A spot on the National registry guarantees a certain level of preservation, but it does not list the property in a conspicuous catalog for places to visit. On the other hand, placement among the other 6 State Historic Sites managed by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs would distinguish the property in a way that attracts visitors. In addition, these sites are well marked by multiple signs to direct interest and traffic from all nearby highways. The process validates the historical narrative of the location in a way other designations cannot, but it also takes away a certain amount of control from the community to establish preservation and direction of the site. All preservation work must be preapproved by the Historic Preservation Division who requires permits for any community use of the property beyond the events scheduled by preservation easements (Friends of…). This means the site could not be used as a community gathering space.
Process for Designation:
While the process for cultural property designation is written in state statute, the process for moving that designation forward to a State Historic Site is much more complicated, and each historic site approaches it differently. The three key ingredients to becoming a State Historic Site are significant capital, community partnerships, and means for interpretation. These conclusions from a Case Study of the Taylor Mesilla Historic Site (a future state historic site) and The Coronado Historic Site (the first State Historic Site in New Mexico), and an Interview with Pilar Cannizzaro, the Preservation Planning Manager for the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division.
Capital:
According to Cannizzaro, the budget of a historic site is of key importance because the state has a small budget for maintaining, preserving, and interpreting the sites. When new sites are added, the budget does not increase; the capital must be split. Therefore, it is essential that a historic site gifts the state additional funds. We see this in the case of the Taylor Home, where the wealthy estate owner gifted the property and his money to the state of New Mexico transferable upon death. For the Coronado Historic Site, Franklin D. Roosevelt gifted the lead archaeologist, Edgar Lee Hewett, $50,000 as part of the antiquities act and Work Projects Administration to excavate and interpret the site in anticipation of the Cuarto Centenario commemoration of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s conquest through New Mexico. In a more recent attempt to designate Los Lucero Historic Property as a State Historic Site, the Department of Cultural affairs completely restored the property, draining funds from other sites. However, it sits empty without the money for interpretation or management.
Cannizzaro noted that a cultural property could become a State Historic Site without immediate funding if organizers of the property could guarantee a sufficient amount of tourism to sustain revenue. In these cases, state and national grants provide up to 90% of the costs of acquisition and restoration in anticipation of tourism providing interpretation and maintenance costs. Events like Old Lincoln Day and the Billy the Kid Pageant bring in enough revenue to sustain Lincoln Historic Site for the remainder of the year.
Community Buy-in:
Nearly everyone I have talked to repeatedly states community buy-in is perhaps the most crucial ingredient to the designation of a historic site.
Every State Historic Site Began the designation process with a “Friends of” 501-3C nonprofit organization established in the interest of preserving a historic site. They work to create a partnership with the public through outreach, provide volunteer labor, fundraise for new and updated exhibits, and secure the liability insurance to host events on and near the property that the State and Federal Government cannot. Perhaps the most important role of the “Friends of” group during their designation process is their presence at legislative meetings. Having members of the community attend these meetings works like grassroots lobbyists to push the site through the designation process.
According to the Historic Preservation Division, “property owners may grant a local government or not-for-profit organization with the preservation mission the right to preserve a historic, archeological, or cultural resource.” This process occurs through a contract called a preservation easement wherein the property owner, in our case The United Steel Workers’ Association, would transfer the development and preservation rights of the Union Hall to the nonprofit organization. These rights include historic preservation and/or open-space preservation. However, the organization must first prove that they have the resources to manage and enforce the restrictions provided for in the easement.
When I spoke with the president of Friends of Coronado, Brian Gilmore, he noted that much of the group’s work now is to continue raising money for new research of the site and working as docents for special tours. I have invited him out to the Cuentos events in July. He also agreed to meet with a committee or group to talk about how to establish a strong “Friends of” group.
Community buy-in can take other forms too. For the redesignation and reinterpretation of the Bosque Redondo site, it came in the form of a letter and petition from 21 concerned Navajo who urged for “the true history of the Navajos and the United States Military ” with support from the Navajo tribe to reinterpret the site and curate a museum that meets the criteria for the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience – a designation of “safe spaces to remember and preserve even the most traumatic memories, but they enable their visitors to make connections between the past and related contemporary human rights issues. ” Through connections with the Navajo tribe, that site is now eligible for grant funding and interpretation support through International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. As part of the reinterpretation, the Navajo tribe now sponsors pilgrimages to Bosque Redondo to honor and remember their ancestors who died there. This tourist event now generates profits through tourism.
We see the same effect with the community support of the Jemez Historic sites and the community support from the Jemez tribe. While the historic site currently represents the Spanish Colonial conquest on the prehistoric site, the Jemez Pueblo recently joined efforts with the Friends of Jemez Historic site to raise money for future excavations of the archeological site to learn more about the Native people who lived there pre-Spanish contact. Excavations will begin in August and accompany a new exhibit about how to clean, interpret, and preserve prehistoric artifacts.
The Salt of The Earth Recovery Project workshops this May-July will not only reaffirm our community buy-in, but they will give us written documentation from our community about what they would like to see done with the union hall. These voices are a crucial element to solidify communal historical merit and designation. Additionally, it gives us a point of contact with individuals who might be interested in becoming the first leaders and members of a Friends of the Local 890 Union Hall or a similar support group. If we invite members of the Department of Cultural Affairs to these events, we position our community to meet with decision makers directly.
Interpretation:
Interpretation of a site comes in many forms: placard, pamphlets, and tours. Unfortunately, there are little to no state funds allocated for historical sites that are not State Historic Sites. Interpretation is often left as work for the community, volunteers, and staff of the site. An already well-established narrative of interpretation would better position the property for State Historic Site Designation. The Salt of the Earth Recovery Project also creates a launching point for interpretation of the significance of the Empire Zinc Mine Strikes and Local 890 Union hall from the perspective of various stakeholders from different generations.
SWOT analysis of State Historic Site Designation:
Strengths:
● Close to Silver City for Tourism
● Recent inclusion in the Bayard City Tour
Weaknesses:
● Not “old” enough/barely passed the 50-year marker
● No ability to prove prior tourism
● No local events to bring in Tourism
Opportunities:
● Historic Women Marker Initiative (kairos)
● Santa Clara CLG nearby offers a connection to other historical attractions
Threats:
● Justifying a budget
● Interpreting the history is challenging and time-consuming.
Certified Local Government Program:
A Certified Local Government Program (CLG) is a political subdivision of the state that has established public policy towards historic preservation. This enacts a historic preservation ordinance and establishes a local preservation commission. An ordinance must meet specific requirements for the designation and protection of historic properties (outlined in NMAC 4.10.10, see FAQ page) The local preservation commission reviews historical projects and makes decisions about preservation and restoration as needed. Generally, this establishes a historical district with multiple historic sites protected within. The CLG can then establish ordinances that establish what private owners can and cannot do with their historical properties. The commission must also meet certain specifications. The designation allows a community to maintain full control of preservation and interpretation including direct participation in the listing process for nominations to the National Register of Historic Sites.
CLG Designation Process:
The designation of sites within that district is decided upon within the CLG’s review panel. CLG grant program coordinator, Karla McWilliams, would work with the community to establish the CLG and guide the community through establishing preservation criteria and measures. To be certified, a CLG candidate must apply to the Historic Preservation Division for certification. An application for certification includes a copy of the preservation ordinance, a list of commission members, commission members’ resumes, how the commission will be staffed, a certification agreement, a checklist, a request for certification, and a list/map of all designated historic properties. Then, the Historic Preservation Division will review the application to ensure it meets program requirements. If it does, it is forwarded to the National Park Service for their review and certification. They decide on the designation process within 30 days of receiving the application.
Other Benefits of the CLG:
Funding:
Aside from maintaining local control the Union Hall’s use and preservation, CLGs are eligible for additional funding from the National Parks Service through the Historic Preservation Fund. While other grants are highly competitive, at least 10% of all of New Mexico’s Federal Historic Preservation funds must be granted to CLGs. In 2007, this was about $80,000. As of now, there are only 9 CLGs in New Mexico, making Bayard highly competitive for funding. These sub-grants have few restrictions on what they can fund, and projects may include: “surveys, National Register nominations, rehabilitation work, design guidelines, educational programs, training, structural assessments, and feasibility studies.” CLG grants are matching (1:1) and reimbursable grants.
As a CLG, the district would also be eligible for an Underrepresented Community Grant through the National Parks Service. Last year the scholarship granted funding to 13 projects totally $500,000. The money from this grant may be used to fund preservation of a property already listed on the National Registry. They may also be used to nominate a specific site for the registry.
Technical Assistance:
CLGs also have the benefit of direct access to State Historic Preservation Officer (Patrick Moore) for consulting about assistance with building assessments, surveys and historical nominations, and general preservation assistance. The community would also receive preservation and management training from CLG program coordinator Karla McWilliams.
Property Value:
The establishing of a historic district generally increases property values within the district by enforcing building maintenance, walkability, and a greater sense of community pride.
SWOT Analysis of CLG designation:
Strengths:
• Bayard has several potential historic sites in need of preservation
• The community shows continued support in preservation efforts, including the letter of support from the city mayor
• Santa Clara, a few miles away, just established a CLG which gives us a model for the creation of a CLG Weaknesses:
• The CLG requires active effort and participation from the government and community which may strain time and monetary resources.
• The CLG allows the city to establish ordinances that may work against the wishes of property owners. Opportunities
• We have already established a working relationship with Karla McWilliams who is willing to meet with community leaders in-person.
• The positionality of the historic events and demographic representation of the community would position the CLG competitively for the Underrepresented Community Grant. Threats:
• Rallying of qualified commission members may prove tricky if the whole community is not invested in the preservation efforts.
Possible Plan for Consideration
Given my best judgement, I recommend the following tentative plan for the preservation and restoration of the Local 890 Union Hall.
Analyze community responses to “What would you like to see done with the Building” through the community writing workshop.
Invite Patrick Moore and Karla McWilliams to the community workshops
Establish “Friends of” non-profit organization for the union hall
Invite Brian Gilmore in to talk to interested parties about the process of establishing a strong friends group
Consider establishing Certified Local Government Program
How do several sites around town contribute to the historical narrative of the community?
Gather local stakeholders in a meeting to discuss with Karla the benefits and process of designating a CLG
Generate a list of potential commission member
Apply for National Registry, either as a district or the union hall as a stand-alone site.
Follow up Actions
What does the community want to do with the Property?
Is preservation or accessibility more important?
Are they interested in establishing a community conversation organization?
Invite Karla McWilliams to Bayard to talk about the specifics of the CLG
Are there other sites in need/eligible for protection?
Who does the community want/need on the committee?
I loaded up my dog in the car and drove over to my friend’s house to pick her up. My friend is a New Mexican native, and she was so excited to go with me. She’d never been to the Coronado Historic Site, despite living so close to it for many years.
We talked about our contrasting in experiences with Southwestern history. Growing up, she took so many classes in New Mexican History that it surprises her I knew nothing. I kept trying to explain how the majority of history books leave out information and lie about what happened–how bias our textbooks are.
“This is the BEST way to learn New Mexican history” she kept telling me, and we discussed our expectations of the historic site.
We knew the Coronado Historic Site was going to be messy–the name alone promotes a bias about whos history the location represents. We were armed only with the description from the Department of Cultural Affairs:
In 1540, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado—with 500 soldiers and 2,000 Indian allies from New Spain—entered the Rio Grande valley somewhere near this site. Coronado was searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. Instead of treasure, he found a dozen villages inhabited by prosperous native farmers. These newly “discovered” people spoke Tiwa, and their ancestors had already been living in this area for thousands of years. Coronado called them: Los Indios de los Pueblos or Pueblo Indians. He and his men visited all twelve Tiwa villages during the course of the next two years because they survived on food and other supplies that they obtained from them. Without the assistance of the Tiwas (willing or unwilling), Coronado and his men very likely would have starved to death.
Already we were talking about how the site focused on Coronado and erased the history of the people that lived there for hundreds of years before Spanish contact. However, we never would have imagined just how much eraser we would see.
The first plaque as you enter the historic site tells a lot about the motivation for designating the historic site:
“Identify places where New Mexico’s history and prehistory could be interpreted and then excavate, preserve, and interpret them to visitors.”
We could not get past the phrase “Interpreted to visitors” because it seemed like such a contrast to the other words in the sentence. That rather than discovering and learning from the sites–an action that places visitors in direct contact with historical artifacts, the site was purposely created to add a third party between the two–someone who could present a particular angle of history. The interpreter selects what he or she finds most interesting to present to a tourist. Or worse, he or she selects the story they’d like the tourist to experience and engage with.
This is the same sentiment I saw on the Department of Cultural Affairs website, where history is driven by tourism more than an understanding of events. But Coronado site is worse than that; It’s false advertising.
Misinterpreting
We went to the state Historic Site looking for artifacts from Coronado. In reality, they have no evidence that the Spanish ever had encounters with the natives at this prehistoric village (and thank goodness). The Coronado historic site, in reality, has nothing to do with Coronado–or even the conquistadors. It’s a prehistoric indigenous village that bears the name Coronado because that’s what the interpreters wanted visitors to experience–the invasion of a village very different from their own culture.
According to our tour guide, in the late 1930s archeologists went looking for the village where Coronado passed the winter. Diaries explain that Coronado and his troops would not have survived the winter without the help of indigenous natives, and so they passed the winter together in a native pueblo before Coronado slaughtered them. In anticipation of the 200 year anniversary of Spanish Conquest in North America, archeologists wanted to find identify a place where SPANISH history collided with New Mexican collided with prehistory. Where the location could be interpreted, excavated, and interpreted for the purpose of tourism.
None of the structures at the Coronado Historic Site are original to the prehistoric ruins once found there. Not original, nor accurate. Archeologist found the remains of a village. However, the remains seemed too fragile to preserve. Therefore, shortly after excavating it, they buried it again and built up replicas. Our tour guide noted that they technics the WPA workers built in the late 30’s were not similar to those used by the original inhabitants, and even some of the structures are not to scale. However, there are no signs indicating the inaccuracies.
Misappropriating
The Coronado Historic Site was meant to uncover information about Coronado’s “accomplishments of exploring and opening up areas unknown to the European.” When they did not find the artifacts to do so, they appropriated the pueblo–not just culturally, but physically and geographically. Tourists could “get an idea” of what it might be like to come across these villages as the Spanish conquistadors once did.
We see this in the plaques describing the site to contemporary visitors. They invite us to “imagine many small agricultural fields” during the peak of its time. Some descriptions are very prosey with images of the children playing with chickens in the plazas. But it’s important to understand that the sight does not invite you to experience the village from a native perspective.
In fact, the contradictory plaques sometimes acknowledge the structures are replicas and other times suggest they are prehistoric: “The pit-like structures to your left and right are the ruins of underground chambers called kivas”
Another disturbing fault of the placards throughout the historic site is that they are from the perspective of the Spanish people despite that there is no evidence to suggest the Spanish made contact with this village. They use Spanish words, like estufa, to describe objects that do not culturally exist in Hispanic culture and history. Furthermore, the descriptions are othering in their language. They’re even offensive.
In this example, De Castañedo constantly maintains a sense of “they,” without acknowledgment of any similarities. He is surprised to find that the tribe he describes (obviously not the tribe that lived here) is hygienic in dealing with their food. We see in his language that he perceives the native as primitive and he praises their level of civility and domesticity.
Furthermore, the plaque descriptions are celebratory of conquering and neutral toward Spanish violence. In the same sentence, we read:
“He was brought to trial for mismanagement of his army and cruelties inflicted on the native people. Coronado was exonerated for of the charges, but his significant contributions to the European Settlement of the New World went unrecognized.”
You cannot take a location in time or space that represents domination and unchecked power and cruelty and remain neutral in blame. It does not accurately portray historical events. The only thing unrecognized here is how the whole historical site devalues the people that actually lived here. A native village misappropriated to Celebrate Spanish conquest and violence and covered up under the guise of tourism.
Everything about this State Historic Monument, from its name to the interpretation was already established for a particular occasion–the anniversary of Coronado coming to New Mexico–with a particular goal in mind–creating a sense of pride for the “discovery” and domination of the cultures that lived here before. Sadly, the motive that keeps all this running is a fake nostalgia, a desire to live an experience that never happened. It’s an experience that maintains the ignorance about history I learned. Worse, it invites “New” Mexicans to remain apathetic toward natives and celebratory of the violence against them.
Misleading
When I spoke to New Mexico Historic Site Instructional Coordinator, Ethan Ortega, on the phone, he made an off-hand comment that really stuck with me. He returned my call wanting clarification on what I meant when I asked about historic monument sites. A few years ago New Mexico changed the official name of the designation–State Historic Sites became State Historic Monuments. As a result, more people come to the sites looking for statues or something more resembling our collective understanding of monuments. It’s a smart rhetorical play on language to bring in revenue. The misleading and ambiguous language creates a misconception that works in favor of generating interest and revenue.
Unfortunately, that is also what we see in the Coronado State Historic Monument. Nothing is real. The name is misleading, the structures are replicas, the descriptions are biased and misappropriated. And somehow this site retains its merit as a historical interpretation for visitors. It’s clear to me how this site got its designation: capital and coercion.
