New Mexico State University graduate student Esperanza Chairez Uriarte joined “Critical Approaches to Place: Teaching Narrative Mapping in Southern New Mexico” as a graduate assistant. While working with the three-year project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Chairez found success in working with members of the community and studying the history and culture of Las Cruces. (NMSU photo by Chloe Dunlap)
Source: NMSU News Release
WRITER: Chloe D. Dunlap, 575-646-1614, chloedun@nmsu.edu
“What can St. Genevieve teach Las Cruces?” A group of community members posed that question in a zine titled “A New Zine Atlas of Las Cruces.”
New Mexico State University graduate student Esperanza Chairez Uriarte answers that question through a zine she co-created in collaboration with community members over the course of three public workshops.
Born and raised in Las Cruces and pursuing a master’s degree in the department of geography and environmental studies, the place she calls home has become the focus of much of her work.
The zine explains that St. Genevieve is a Catholic church built in 1859, “…a pillar in the religious, cultural and social life of Las Cruces until it was demolished in 1967 as part of ‘urban renewal.”
“The zine was an experiment in community collaboration,” Chairez said. “Over the course of three workshops, I prompted participants to think about their relationship to Las Cruces through creative writing, mapping and illustrative prompts. The zine came together as a multi-vocal and creative exploration of the history and future of this place.”
As a graduate assistant, Chairez is among those who joined NMSU professors Eric Magrane and Kerry Banazek during their three-year-curriculum funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Magrane and Banazek received the NEH grant to support “Critical Approaches to Place: Teaching Narrative Mapping in Southern New Mexico,” a public engagement project organized by collaborators from NMSU’s Geography and Environmental Studies and English departments.
“We started the initiative as a way to create a space for students to do interdisciplinary work on a sense of place and the environment that drew on humanities approaches to environmental issues,” said Magrane, associate professor in Geography and Environmental Studies. “We think that the humanities offer a lot of important ways for both understanding and making sense of where we are now and thinking creatively about ways forward. We wanted to use this project to create interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations.”
Using the St. Genevieve church, as well as place-based details such as adobe and cochineal, to fuel its juxtapositions, the zine explores ideas of place, environmentalism and historic site preservation in the Las Cruces area through photos, creative writing, drawings, poems and maps.
A public zine celebration and panel brought together a variety of important community members like chef Mateo Herrera, Martha Rodriguez, president of Las Esperanzas, and Diego Medina, artist and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Piro-Manso-Tiwa tribe. Medina’s work is included in the zine. The release party for the zine included tamales made with ground Mesquite and a panel discussion on each participant’s relationship to the Mesquite neighborhood.
The NEH grant supported a public speaker series that featured multiple members of the Pueblo of Zuni (A:shiwi) including Curtis Quam, Ronnie Cachini and Mallery Quetawki. London-based scholar Harriet Hawkins, director of the Royal Holloway Centre for the GeoHumanities, was also featured as a guest speaker.
The grant also allowed Banazek and Magrane to teach an interdisciplinary seminar, which focused on geohumanities, rhetoric, place, representation and environment. Graduate and undergraduate students who took the seminar were tasked with creating group story map projects engaging with and exploring the complexity of place and the Las Cruces region.
One of the story maps titled “Remembering the Rio” is a collection of archives, interviews and photographs documenting the lower Rio Grande throughout time. Serving as a humanist historical guidebook of the Rio Grande, it recently garnered the attention of a New Mexico senator’s office.
“I recently received a call from a field representative for Senator Ben Ray Luján, asking about that story map. This class project from 2022 is actually still reaching people, potentially influential people who are involved in policy making and in our community in many ways,” Magrane said.
Other student-made story maps include “Las Cruces Community Gardens,” which looks at urban farming and community and school gardens in Las Cruces, and “Sounds of Las Cruces,” which contains field recordings from within and around the city.
“That’s one of the most exciting things. We wrote the grant, and we did the project, but we were also able to support and develop really fascinating work from graduate students,” Magrane said.
Banazek and Magrane hope student projects like “A New Zine Atlas of Las Cruces” and the Story Maps will continue to influence the community and will inspire future students to ask themselves, “What can I teach Las Cruces?”
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