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Bridging Borders – Stories of Migration, Memory, and Cultural Identity with Kristin Yarris, Tobin Hansen, Salma Valadez Marquez, and Liesl Cohn De Leon

May 15 / 3:30pm-5:00pm / EMU Cedar Room

Join the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS) for a dynamic research colloquium featuring three presentations from current CLLAS faculty and graduate student grantees. Through diverse lenses—art-activism, food studies, and oral history—these scholars explore the lived experiences, cultural legacies, and resistances of Latinx, Latin American, and Guatemalan Maya communities across borders and generations.

• Faculty members Kristin Yarris and Tobin Hansen present “Witnessing Immigration Injustice: Art, Memory, and Activism with Hostile Terrain ’94,” a collaborative project that brings an interactive memorial installation to the University of Oregon, inviting participants to engage with the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border through art and research. Learn more.

• Salma Valadez Marquez (PhD Candidate, Folklore) shares work from her dissertation project “Amor Propio: Mexican Food and Culture Beyond the Fictions We’ve Been Fed,” uncovering how Mexican foodways have been used to shape—and resist—national narratives of race, gender, and identity throughout history.

• Liesl Cohn De Leon (PhD Student, Anthropology) discusses her anthropological research, “Migrant Memories of Guatemalan Maya Women in Oregon,” examining how Maya women reconstruct collective identity and memory in new contexts shaped by displacement, violence, and resilience.

This event is free and open to the public. Come learn how scholars are using research to illuminate underrepresented stories and to foster dialogue across communities, borders, and generations.