Speakers and Artists
Editors David Glisch-Sanchez and Nic Rodriguez Villafañe
David Glisch-Sánchez is a life coach and community healer whose work is to help individuals and organizations grow and expand their capacity for emotional wisdom. They do this work through their coaching practice Soul Support Life Coaching, where they are committed to making coaching accessible to everyone. David also teaches in the Program for Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Arkansas - Fayetteville. To learn more about David you can check out their website at www.soulsupportlifecoaching.com or follow them on all social platforms @soulsupportlc.
Nic Rodriguez Villafañe is a dynamic third-year PhD candidate with a rich tapestry of identities and experiences. As a nonbinary Flori Bori Philly Rican, Nic is a prolific writer, passionate educator, vibrant DJ, and crowned olorisa in the Luccumi religion. With over a decade of experience as an organizer and researcher, Nic has been at the forefront of liberation movements, deeply committed to cultivating creative sites of liberation politics, artistry, and scholarship. Their academic work delves into the phenomenological impacts of diaspora Boricua and Afro-Caribbean performing arts, and the transmutation of these creative practices. A recipient of the prestigious Leeway Foundation Arts & Change grant, Nic's work has graced the pages of esteemed publications including The Philadelphia Inquirer, NASW Press Journal for Social Work, and The Gordian Review. Nic holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University Newark. They are co-editors of Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing & Justice an anthology published by Common Notions Press. Additionally, Nic collaborates as a dramaturg and music/sound designer for multiple theatre and film projects
Las Cafeteras
Las Cafeteras delivers powerful storytelling and honors the past by electrifying traditional instruments, fusing Mexican folk with electronic dance beats. With their third studio album, A Night in Nepantla, they explore the concept of “Nepantla”, a Nahuatl word meaning "in-between" or "in the middle". It serves as a metaphor for the lived experiences of people who exist at the intersections of multiple, often conflicting cultural, ethnic, and social identities. Lead vocalist Denise Carlos reflects, “We welcome our fans into a different world, and it’s a profound experience for all of us. We create a space where we can connect, share, and celebrate our common humanity."
Born and raised East of the Los Angeles River, Las Cafeteras are remixing roots music as modern troubadours. They are a sonic explosion of Afro-Mexican rhythms, electronic beats, and powerful rhymes documenting stories of a community seeking to ‘build a world where many worlds fit.’
Las Cafeteras have 40 years of combined experience in organizing, cultural work, training facilitation, and storytelling workshops, and they have built the skills and networks necessary to use the arts as a hammer to shape the present for “a more just future”. Their work is intersectional and multimedia, and they have partnered with various social justice organizations over the past 10 years to reach the hearts and minds of their communities for just causes.
Meet our Artist Calba! Creator and designer of our Latinx Heritage Month art
Calba Rio is a California-based artist-scholar and community curator exploring the interstitial spaces between memory, the corporeal, and collective ephemeral longings. They seek to unravel the ways in which power and sensorial experience meet to create opportunities for worldly undoing, manifesting expansive possibilities within the potential of pain. Their scholarship centers on phenomenological inquiries into concepts of beings, as summoned within sexuality and pornography. As an artist, they create experimental films and objects that pivot on erotic and sexual practices, documenting and archiving the pleasure constellations of queer and trans-melanated bodies.
Dr. Margaret Dorsey and Dr. Miquel Diaz-Barriga, UR professors of anthropology, present a lecture titled, "Fencing in Democracy," in conjunction with their newly published book and the exhibition "Border Cantos/Sonic Borders" on view in the Harnett Museum of Art.
Margaret Dorsey is Professor of Anthropology at the University or Richmond and an award-winning author of Fencing in Democracy: Border Walls, Necrocitizenship and the Security State. In 2021, Dorsey’s students created a fabulous interactive website as part of their “Borders and Walls” course.
Dorsey was an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) as well as founding curator of UTRGV’s bilingual Border Studies Archive. In addition to being a Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brooklyn College (CUNY), Dorsey completed an Ethel-Jane Westfeld Bunting Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. Her research focuses on border security, Mexican American folklore and border studies more generally. Dorsey has published numerous articles on citizenship, borders and walls with Miguel Díaz-Barriga. In 2016, they co-curated an internationally-juried art exhibition at apexart in Manhattan and created a short documentary film for the American Anthropological Association on aesthetics and border walls. Her other book-length publications include Linda Escobar and Tejano Conjunto Music and Pachangas: Borderlands Music, U.S. Politics, and Transnational Marketing.
Miguel Díaz-Barriga (Stanford University, 1991 PhD anthropology) is the author of numerous publications on Mexican American Culture, Visual Anthropology, Border Security, and Social Movements. From 1989 to 2010, he was a professor at Swarthmore College where he also served as a Department Chair and from 2010 to 2018 he was a professor of anthropology and Department Chair at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. During the 2014-2015 academic year, Diaz-Barriga was awarded the Carol Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College. He was also named an Ethel-Jane Westfeldt Bunting Fellow at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, NM. At the national level, he was elected President of the Association of Latino and Latin Anthropologists and was chosen to be Chair of the Committee on Minority Issues in Anthropology. He has also served on the Executive Board and worked as the Section Convener of the American Anthropological Association. He is the recipient of numerous grants, including from the National Science Foundation as well as the Hewlett and Ford Foundations. He is currently completing a book with anthropologist Margaret E. Dorsey on the construction of the US-Mexico border wall, Fencing in Democracy: Border Walls, Necrocitizenship and the Security State (Duke University Press, January 2020).
Mareas/Tides
by Marion Ramirez
Jamilla Musser is Professor of English and Africana Studies at the CUNY Graduate School. She is the author of three books: Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism, Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance, and, most recently, Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined. She writes art criticism for The Brooklyn Rail and is the current co-president of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP).
Dr. Christina Termini received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of New Mexico where she studied the spatiotemporal kinetics of acute myeloid leukemia signaling. She performed her postdoctoral training at the University of California, Los Angeles where she studied how proteoglycans regulate hematopoietic stem cell maintenance and bone marrow regeneration. Dr. Termini is committed to facilitating scientific training, pursuing rigorous research, and making innovative discoveries as a team. She is dedicated to building an inclusive and supportive community that will foster the scientific and career development of researchers from all walks of life.