Archivist & Looks-Server. Rachel Marie Photography, 2023.

Academic Publications

• Reza, R. Rose. (2013). “Producing Yeni Dünya for an Ottoman Readership: The travels of Ilyas bin Hanna Al-Mawsuli in Colonial Latin America, 1675-1683.” in Classen, Albrecht (ed.), East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World. Series: Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture 14, 699-714. Berlin: De Gruyter.

• Reza, R. Rose. (2009). “¿Extranjeros perniciosos ó Mexicanos? Middle Easterners and the Negotiation over National Identity in Mexico, 1927-1937.” M.A. Thesis, New Mexico State University.

My name is R. Rose Reza. The R. stands for Rambo, but only personal friends of mine may address me on a first-name basis. (And before you ask, yes: Rambo is a feminine name because I am femme and it's my name. But I digress). Everyone else, please call me Rose. Code switching is a necessary component of my life as a queer & trans person (and always has been).

I am a queer and transsexual femme of Latinx & Arab descent, and I am autistic, neurodivergent, and disabled, with all of these elements comprising my culture. I express these cultural identities through an "alternative" aesthetic involving tattoos and piercings which hold deep significance beyond the skin-deep. While I hold close my cultural heritages, I have a fraught relationship with the nation-state paradigm (including that of my current country of residence) and do not hold allegiances in this regard.

I am first-generation U.S.-born (1982) to Paraguayan parents, but internationally-raised (American International School of Riyadh, KSA: 1987-1995). I lack a stable "hometown" and "homeland" as a result, as I don't hold my current citizenship as a core piece of my identity; aside from a non-U.S. primary education, I attended four different high schools in two different U.S. states, thus never experiencing a stable home, culture, or peer group anywhere growing up. (Being queer, trans, and neurodivergent exacerbated this alienation). 

As a "third culture kid" who experienced a tumultuous international upbringing and a cultural disconnect from my familial and cultural heritages as well as the cultural disconnect of being a queer, trans, and neurodivergent individual contending with a hostile society, my search-for-self initially led me to major in academic History with a focus on both Middle Eastern migration to the Americas in the early 20th century (NMSU, 2007-2009) and commodity studies centered around the early modern Ottoman Imperial economy (University of Arizona, 2010-2016).

After a necessary hiatus from academia (2016-2021), I returned to the University of Arizona to begin my Masters program in Library & Information Science and completed my MLIS degree requirements in May 2023. Thus, I hold two M.A. degrees in History and one in LIS; yet my career focus lies within the bounds of neither, and instead lies in professional writing. Even though I never became a professional Historian nor Archivist, my education was not a "waste" in the slightest, instead amplifying my inherent writing skills to the professional level. So: I bring to the table these skills, in conjunction with my positionality as a queer, trans, autistic, neurodivergent, and disabled femme with a passion for information equity, police divestment, and accessibility in archival praxis.

“We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw (2020) 

"To refuse to be instruments of social control in an essentially undemocratic society, to begin to play some small part in the creation of a real democracy: these are worthy jobs for historians, for archivists, for us all."

Howard Zinn (1977)

Rose Reza with her cats Maus (top) & Luna (bottom). TDK, 2021. 

My Professional Culture

Holding three professional degrees and working fully in none of their fields is a bit of a hard pill to swallow, but I've managed to transmute all of these experiences into two major areas applicable to the manner of work I am best at: Professional Writing & Information Organization.

I prefer working "behind the scenes" outside of the general public eye, but I function well in small, tight team environments with shared roles. I am self-motivated and work just as well solo as I do within a team setting. I eschew social media and I do not maintain an active social media presence on any major platform.

I thrive in work environments featuring minimal surveillance & minimal public-facing roles; maximal self-direction & pacing; group project work with clear roles, responsibilities, & deadlines; and a work culture based upon an understanding of intersectionality and a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As an autist whose values are sacrosanct and non-negotiable, I cannot and will not compromise them for any reason:

• I refuse to directly work with law enforcement or any state/federal military entity (Police, Border Patrol, ICE, Homeland Security, Army/Navy/Marines/Coast Guard/Air Force/Space Force) as these institutions are irredeemably harmful to the very demographics I hail from and hold dear. 

• I am committed to a life of anti-capitalist praxis, meaning that I do not aspire to the "traditional" (neo-liberal capitalist) workplace cultural setting or adherence to any related societal norms. Prioritizing self-care and cultivating radical empathy is more important than profit and always will be. 

My Mission Statement

In a U.S. national milieu facing ongoing (and amplified) racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism, I utilize my professional writing skills to assist with uplifting marginalized communities---Queer & Trans Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (QTBIPOC) in particular---and on centering the principles of anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and sustainability.

Considering my childhood go-to pleasure reading consisted of the World Book Encyclopedia set, it's fair to say that not only books but information organization in general fascinated me and served as a much-needed escape when adolescence and adulthood brought out latent undiagnosed gender dysphoria.

At age 18, my very first foray into library work began as a library page in Albuquerque, NM shelving books at a public library in accordance with DDC, and followed with a four-year position as an antiquarian bookseller's assistant at a local secondhand/antiquarian bookstore (where I learned informal appraisal and preservation techniques regarding antiquarian books and ephemera). 

History drew me in as an undergraduate academic, likely on account of my disjointed international upbringing and disconnect from family and heritage cultures. Earning my B.A. in 2005 (University of New Mexico), I spent a gap year teaching myself elementary Arabic and Turkish and earned my first History M.A. in 2009 (New Mexico State University) after producing a Masters Thesis; I followed this in 2010 with what would have been a Ph.D. in History but instead served as a second History M.A. in 2016 (University of Arizona) after transitioning to my authentic self in late 2015. During this time I engaged in intensive language Arabic and Turkish programs funded through several Foreign Language Acquisition (FLAS) fellowships, and produced a published article from a conference paper (2013). 

However, numerous demanding Graduate Teaching Assistantships and low-wage non-benefit adjunct faculty jobs (fostering terrible work-life balance) ended my former dreams of History professorship as burnout set in from almost 10 years of graduate school. This coincided with my self-discovery in late 2015, and the combined effect led me to transmute my dissertation prospectus into thesis credit for an M.A. instead, and I left academia for the first time in May 2016.

Rose Reza in her natural element. Rachel Marie Photography, 2023.

Finding My Element

I returned to academia in 2021 after an unsuccessful six-year stint in the service economy (worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic), enrolling as an MLIS student with the University of Arizona's School of Information. Carrying with me the sum of my knowledge and experience as an historian, I took to Library & Information Science with renewed passion, centering my positionality as a queer, trans, neurodivergent, disabled, autistic, and impoverished femme of color. My inherent awareness of the subjectivity of historical narratives, research techniques, and the archival process made the decision simple and promised a better, more fulfilling work type and work-life balance than endless service economy and adjunct faculty jobs. 

During my MLIS program (Jan 2021 - May 2023), I've worked as:

• An Archives Graduate Assistant with University of Arizona Library, Special Collections processing my first archival collection and curating my first digital exhibit (2021 - 2022); 

• A Digital Archives Intern with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona managing preservation metadata for a collection of digitized video (Summer 2022); 

• A Digital Archives Intern with Permanent Legacy Foundation creating and managing a digital archive for the Tucson, AZ QTBIPOC-centric non-profit art collective Splinter Collective, LLC (2022 - 2023).

Post-graduation as an MLIS-holder (May 2023), I've worked as:

• A Digital Archives Intern with the Philadelphia, PA-based People's Media Record through my membership in the 2023 LEADING Fellowship Cohort through Drexel University Metadata Research Center (Summer - Winter 2023);

• A Lead Consultant with the Tucson, AZ-based Sol Grant Partners, a grant consulting firm focusing on providing their services for organizations centering societally-marginalized peoples (2023).

Despite my renewed focus on an archival career, the state of the job market and my inability to relocate out of Tucson prevented me from pursuing a career as an archivist. And while I am highly computer literate, despite not coming from a Computer Science background (I taught myself how to type without lessons and how to navigate MS-DOS CLI as a child in the 1980s; I taught myself HTML and TCP/IP Protocols as a teenager in the 1990s; I taught myself MS Office Suite, MacOS, Linux OS, Adobe Photoshop, and numerous other software as an adult), I am not a tech worker. However:

My most applicable professional skill sets center on writing and organizing. While neither an Historian nor Archivist, the strength of my professional prose and my inherent penchant for organization were strong features of my professional journey. Thus, despite my professional degree fields: I found my place as a grant writer and coordinator, where I thrive.