Crossing Digital Fronteras Rehumanizing Latinx Education and Digital Humanities – 2.18.25

Founded in the 1990s, the Latinx, Latin American, and Caribbean Studies (LLACS) program at Northeastern returns to the Fall 2024 semester with the “Celebrating 30 Years of LLACS Scholarship: A Book Talk Series”. This speaker series centers Northeastern LLACS faculty discussing their recent publications.

This event will feature speakers Dr. Isabel Martinez, Dr. Irma V. Montelongo, Dr. Nicholas D. Natividad, and Cassie Tanks.

Dr. Isabel Martinez is a Latinx youth immigration scholar whose research has primarily focused on the transnational lives of unaccompanied immigrant teenagers from Mexico/Central America. She is currently developing the New York Latinx Comedy Project, an oral history project that situates Latinx voices within a history of the NYC stand-up comedy industry. She is the founding director of the Unaccompanied Latin American Minor Project (U-LAMP) and is the Fall 2022 CMAS Visiting Scholar at UH.

Dr. Irma V. Montelongo is a Professor of Instruction and the Director of the Chicano Studies Program at The University of Texas at El Paso. Her research and teaching interests focus on race, class, gender, sexuality, and criminology on the U.S.-Mexico border. Dr. Montelongo also serves as the Online Program Coordinator for the Chicana/o Studies Program. In 2018 she received the Border Hero Award from Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center as well as the Regents Outstanding Teaching Award from The University of Texas System.

Dr. Nicholas D. Natividad is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University. He has published extensively on Human Rights and Hispanic-Serving Institutions including the chapters and journal articles “Understanding Human Rights along the US-Mexico border through a Decolonial Lens” (Decolonizing Approaches in Human Rights and Social Work, 2023), “Lucha Libre and Cultural Icons: Successful College Transition Programs at Hispanic-Serving Institutions” (New Directions for Higher Education, 2015), and the article, “Decolonizing Leadership: Towards Equity and Justice at Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Emerging HSIs (eHSIs)” (w/ Garcia, Journal of Transformative Leadership and Policy Studies, 2018).

Cassie Tanks, M.S.L.S., is an archivist, aspiring historian, and first generation student originally from San Diego, California. She is pursuing a PhD in World History at Northeastern University, has an MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in History from San Diego State University. Tanks is developing the collaborative public digital history project “After the War,” contributes to the Reckonings Project and Apartheid Heritage(s) at Northeastern University, developed the “UNC Story Archive” and “Queerolina: A spatial exploration of LGBTQiA+ experiences through oral history” at UNC Chapel Hill, and is experienced in connecting students, community, and faculty with digital humanities skills.

We will be celebrating their most recently published book, Crossing Digital Fronteras: Rehumanizing Latinx Education and Digital Humanities (State University of New York Press). Crossing Digital Fronteras is about liberatory possibilities and digital technologies in the classroom. The book centers critical Latinx Digital Humanities to illustrate the ways college faculty and Latinx students harness digital tools to engage in “messy” yet essential active learning and knowledge production in Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Latinx Studies courses. With increasing Latinx student enrollment and a growing need for the humanities in our complex world, it is essential that HSIs and instructors integrate twenty-first-century tools into their teaching practices to truly “serve” Latinx students and communities. This book definitively inserts Latinx Digital Humanities into broader conversations about best practices at HSIs, on the one hand, and digital humanities and social justice, on the other. Most importantly, it provides practical examples of innovative, rehumanizing digital pedagogies that give students the liberatory learning they deserve.

Please join us for this highly relevant and important discussion, as well as ¡CELEBRACIÓN! of this exciting book.

(Virtual attendees will receive Zoom link the day before the event)