Fieldwork

With the support of the USC Graduate School, the USC Shoah Foundation, the USC Del Amo Foundation, UT Austin's Casa Herrera, and NYU's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, I have developed multiple research and teaching projects. These projects include archival investigations with CIRMA (Center for Mesoamerican Research), which houses photo collections from Guatemala's Civil War (1960-1996). My project analyzes photos of political resistance, including those created by photojournalist and artist Daniel Hernández-Salazar. I have presented this research at UT Austin's Casa Herrera, a learning center in Antigua, and Proyecto Poporopo, a gallery in Guatemala City.

Additionally, I have worked with NYU's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics to investigate migration in Chiapas, Mexico. This fieldwork included interviewing migrants at the Suchiate River, various train stops, and shelters including La 72. Such research informed the creation of a public street performance, as well as a digital dossier published through Tome.

As a member of USC’s Genocide Research Cluster, an interdisciplinary group studying how people counteract racist ideologies and state violence, I also investigate Afro-Brazilian literature and film, focusing on narratives about, and also by, favela inhabitants. Though many scholars classify this cultural production as “peripheral,” I claim that the genre challenges false distinctions between city and nature, as well as self and other. I started this research with guidance from Randal Johnson, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA, who put me in contact with Carlos Diegues. Fieldwork for this project has included interviews with the directors of 5 x Favela: Agora por nós mesmos (2010).