PublicHistory Bringing Colorado’s Latina/o History to Local Community Audiences

AHA Session 118
Friday, January 6, 2017: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Mile High Ballroom 2A (Colorado Convention Center, Ballroom Level)
Chair:
Adriana Nieto, Metropolitan State University of Denver
Panel:
Linda Arroyo-Holmstrom, Boulder Valley School District
Tony Garcia, Su Teatro
Patricia Nelson Limerick, Center of the American West, University of Colorado, and Colorado State Historian
Marjorie K. McIntosh, University of Colorado at Boulder
Kirsten Wilson, Motus Theater
Mary Dolores Young, One-Action 2016: Arts + Immigration Project

Session Abstract

What makes Colorado’s Latina/o history unique in the American West? How have Hispano communities with roots stretching deep into Mexico faced the challenges of incorporation within the arbitrary boundaries of the state of Colorado? How have artist expressions of Latina/o history engaged the local community? This panel highlights Denver and Boulder projects address these important questions. These efforts deliberately reach beyond academic readers to reach many who might otherwise ignore or neglect this crucial history.

Marjorie McIntosh, Emerita Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder, will join another board member from the Boulder County Latino History Project to discuss the challenges of recovering and translating neglected oral histories of Latina/o families in a largely Anglo university community. Engaging young Latina/o scholars in this project, McIntosh helps to give voice to a working-class community long marginalized.

Kirsten Wilson, Creative Director of One Action and Motus Theater, will join another board member to review “Arts + Immigration,” an arts-based project to foster community conversation on historic and contemporary issues of immigration. Wilson and other One Action members seek to explore diverse historical experiences in order to enrich the local and state conversation about what it means to acknowledge an immigrant past.

Tony Garcia, Artistic Director from Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center in Denver, will also join the Round Table. For more than forty years, this theater organization has created original productions that speak to the experiences of Chicanos. Su Teatro not only brings national attention to Denver with its productions, but also engages the local community in historical education projects that explore Chicano identity.

Commenting on the Round Table will be Adriana Nieto, a Chicano Studies scholar at Metropolitan State University of Denver. A Denver native, Nieto explores Chicana/o spirituality and history and integrates oral history into her teaching.

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