Telemundo Pulso News Interviews Dr. Michelle Téllez

Téllez began her lecture discussing the brutal working conditions in maquiladoras, or factories, that are used by transnational companies seeking cheap labor provided by border dwellers, especially women…

Many families are drawn to the border to work in factories, or maquiladoras, says Michelle Téllez, a Mexican-American studies professor at the University of Arizona. But the cost of living is high and there’s little infrastructure in place to help families survive once they get there. For some people, that means crossing the border for work.

Others, especially women, become innovators at home.

“Women leading social movements, women at the forefront of future endeavors, women who are concerned about the future of their children, oftentimes,” Téllez says."

Michelle Téllez, an assistant professor in the department of Mexican American Studies at UA said the charges against students are a “move toward silencing” progressive activists.

Téllez explained that the student protest against the agents, who were fully uniformed and armed, should not be disconnected from the context of Arizona’s anti-immigrant policies, and what she described as Border Patrol’s “culture of cruelty”

Editors from The Chicana M(other)work Anthology will speak to their work to bring together emerging scholarship and testimonios by and about self-identified Chicana and Women of Color mother-scholars, activists, and allies who center mothering as transformative labor. 

​“I’m thrilled to have our project be part of this event not only because we get to be in conversation with other brilliant scholars and writers, but also because The Feminist Wire Books series already shows evidence of highlighting intersectional, groundbreaking scholarship and activism that is central to transforming the ways in which we understand knowledge production inside and outside of the academy,” said Michelle Téllez, an editor of The Chicana M(other)work Anthology and assistant professor in the UA Department of Mexican American Studies.

"Latinas and Black women (as of Fall 2016) make up only two percent of the full-time faculty teaching in degree-granting higher education institutions (two year and four year) – just two percent of Black and Latina professors teach full-time with benefits. Meanwhile, white men professors make up 41% of the professors teaching full-time in higher ed, and white women make up 35%"

In an interview with Fierce by Mitú, Dr. Téllez said that her Mexican-born mother received a 6thgrade education in a small town in Jalisco, Mexico, saying, “Like many first-generation students, I struggled with feelings of not belonging that often continued into the professoriate. I remember watching all of my peers’ families moving them into the dorms my first days at UCLA while I was already working and mopping floors at the cafeteria because I needed to find employment right away.”

"Michelle Téllez, an assistant professor in Mexican American Studies at the UA, said that there are several lenses through which to view Sanchez’s activism....
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Sanchez, who often used the line “let’s educate, not incarcerate,” brought attention to a prison and penal system that was used unequally against Chicanos. He fought against student tracking, which typically meant that Chicano students were guided away from academic programs and into technical training. Sanchez spoke out against injustice and anti-immigrant legislation, and was effective in organizing neighborhoods, said Téllez, who grew up in the San Diego area and personally knew Sanchez."

Michelle Téllez first heard the lively harmonic sounds of son jarocho music at a community concert in Los Angeles. The band playing was Mono Blanco, a well-known troupe from Veracruz, Mexico.
“The sound drew me in. It was so fast and sharp,” said Téllez, assistant professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona.

Por su parte, la doctora Téllez, señaló que a causa de los cambios en las reformas migratorias de los últimos años, el tipo de migración en el estado de Arizona ha cambiado radicalmente y ha generado un clima de temor entre los migrantes, principalmente mexicanos.

Two teams with a total of 12 faculty members represented from the University of Arizona Colleges of Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social and Behavioral Sciences recently were awarded $30,000 to initiate projects focusing on border issues.

Transfrontera: Movements, Community and Identity in the Américas
This project will bring together interdisciplinary scholars whose work critically examines the material and symbolic manifestations of borders. By centering on the concept of borderlands, Transfrontera is making an intentional appeal to scholarship that attends to the violence and inequality that borders perpetuate, or what Gloria Anzaldúa called "una herida abierta" (an open wound). It also speak to the creativity, solidarities and utopias that are possible when communities come together in the "third space," generally understood to be libraries, cafes, parks and other public spaces.

Team members include Anita Huizar-Hernandez and Lillian Gorman assistant professors in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Michelle Téllez and Maurice Rafael Magaña assistant professors of Mexican-American studies.

Read more here.

"Women are, in many ways, erased from the common narrative of the border region, says Michelle Téllez, a University of Arizona professor who studies and writes about the border, community and gendered migration. When women are the subject of stories, they are often seen solely as “breeders” — the producers of children who are not wanted in the United States, demonstrated by terms like “anchor baby,” she says...." 

“His music carries our stories, our histories,” said Michelle Téllez, an interdisciplinary assistant professor in the Mexican-American Studies Department at the UA. “His songs helped shaped identity.”

"Michelle Tellez, a Mexican-American Studies professor at the University of Arizona, said many Mexican-Americans also view the term "Mexican" as synonymous with bad because of the way it has been used against them...."

"Economic advancement was limited below the border, in part because the North American Free Trade Agreement brought heavily subsidized U.S. corn into Mexico and widespread privatization of Mexican farmland, said Michelle Téllez, a professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at Northern Arizona University."

“Tia is a firm believer in the ability of everyday people to become change-makers for social and economic justice in their communities,” said Michelle Téllez, a faculty member in ethnic studies and sociology at NAU, who has worked alongside Tia for the past five years."

"In October, we will launch our first statewide residency with Ana Teresa Fernandez, a Mexican-born artist who focuses on feminism and the border.  We are working with a great group of female producers (Entre Nosotr@s, Dr. Michelle Téllez at NAU, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Border Action Alliance, Gaby Munoz at Phoenix Art Museum) to create engaging work with communities."

"According to a qualitative research study in the May 2015 journal Violence against Women, U.S. national and local policies created to stem the influx of undocumented migrants from Mexico and Latin America into the United States have led to escalating violence against women in proliferating drop houses in Arizona. These drop houses are often marked by kidnapping and sexual assault. “As migration has become corporatized and militarized, the drop houses have increasingly become places of involuntary detention where, in some cases, migrants are kept in (near) slave-like conditions,” the authors report. The researchers, who include Michelle Tellez, NAU lecturer in Ethnic Studies and Sociology..."

Arizona Humanities has announced the recipients of the 2014 Humanities Awards. The public is invited to attend the awards reception on Thursday, November 13, 2014 from 4:30 – 7:30 p.m. at the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center in downtown Phoenix, Arizona....

Today, we’re introducing you to Dr. Michelle Tellez, who we are sharing with Ethnic Studies...

We're deeply honored to preserve the work of Dr. Michelle Téllez. She's an interdisciplinary scholar trained in sociology, Chicana/o studies, community studies and education.