In Community
BI-NATIONAL ARTS RESIDENCY
The Bi-National Arts Residency (BNAR) began with the inspired idea of connecting cultural communities throughout the Sonoran Desert with ideas of social justice, history, and identity through art and performance.
CHICANA M(OTHER)WORK
Chicana M(other)work is a concept, project, and collective informed by our specific gendered, classed, and racialized experiences as first-generation, working class, Chicana-identified, PhD mamas from Mexican immigrant families. Chicana M(other)work offers a new interpretation of motherwork that looks at care work in a way that includes what we do in our communities through activism, self-care, healing, survival, and accountability. Together, as the Chicana M(other)work collective, we theorize, write, organize, mother, and create spaces for communal healing and care out of our shared belief that the labor of mothering is a transformative act within and beyond academia. Our collective work includes collaborative academic writing and digital media projects.
SON JAROCHO COLLECTIVE
We are a collective of inter-generational students from Arizona who are learning the tradition of Son Jarocho music. Through Fandango, we hope to build community, share our common culture, and our stories. Click here to see the video thanking sponsors for supporting our successful crowd funding campaign.
Former Board Member of the Consortium on Gender-Based Violence (2018-2020). The University of Arizona Consortium on Gender-Based Violence is a research and resource center that seeks to model and inspire a radical shift in the way we think about and address gender-based violence.
Southwest Folklife Alliance
Former Board Member and Chair of Programs (2017-2020) for the Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA) - an affiliate non-profit organization of the University of Arizona, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. SFA is the designated Folk Arts Partner of the Arizona Commission on the Arts with the support of the National Endowment of the Arts. SFA builds more equitable and vibrant communities by celebrating the everyday expressions of culture, heritage and diversity in the Greater Southwest.
AZ ETHNIC STUDIES NETWORK
AZ Ethnic Studies Network was a statewide network of educators and concerned individuals who participated (between 2012-2016) in regional groups to educate the public about Ethnic Studies and why it is a necessary part of educating Arizona students to be critical thinkers prepared to work in an increasingly complex global society.
BEYOND BOUNDARIES
Beyond Boundaries, housed in the Ethnic Studies program at Northern Arizona University, provides students, faculty, and community members with the opportunity to experience, collaborate, make media and discuss border crossings and disruptions, decolonial praxis, identity, and community formations across multiple borderlands. Beyond Boundaries is conceived as a campus-community initiative that will bring speakers, activists, media makers, and artists to the NAU campus and beyond with the hopes of inciting dialogue, transformation and creating the possibilities for shifting research paradigms. I founded and directed the project between 2015-2016.
ENTRE NOSOTR@S
Between 2013-2015, entre nosOTR@S was an Arizona based collective that created community embedded events in collaboration with Chicana/Latina/Indigenous women and gender non-conforming artists. Born out of a Gender and the Borderlands class I taught at ASU, we fostered critical dialogues around gender, sexuality, race, class, and cultura across borders. Click here to view a 3 Day Series Event dedicated to Chicanaartivism, Música, and Dialogue.
QUETZAL CO-OP
A member between 2013-2017, the Quetzal Co-op is based out of the NAHUACALLI – A Cultural Embassy of Indigenous Peoples that supports local-global holistic indigenous community development initiatives in accord with the principle of Community Ecology and Self Determination, the co-op sells just trade whole-bean locally roasted coffee.