Event Category: Public Lecture

Rafael Martínez at CSU Dominguez Hills

Date: Thursday, March 13, 2025

Time: 4-6 p.m., PST

Where: Loker Student Union, CSU Dominguez Hills, Ballroom A, 1000 E Victoria St, Carson, CA

Rafael Martínez will speak on “Bridging Borders: Stories from Undocumented Youth Movements,” at his alma mater, California State University, Dominguez Hills. Martínez is author of Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the Unites States and he is an assistant professor in the Southwest Borderlands Initiative at Arizona State University whose work focuses on immigrant rights, mixed-status families, and Latinx cultural and historical productions in the Southwest borderlands.

The event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the CSUDH Department of History.

About the book:

Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States takes readers on a journey through the history of the rise of undocumented youth social movements in the United States in the twenty-first century. The book follows the documentation trail of undocumented youth activists spanning over two decades of organizing. Each chapter carefully analyzes key organizing strategies used by undocumented youth to produce direct forms of activism that expose and critique repressive forms of state control and violence. This inquiry is particularly generative in relation to how immigrant bodies are erased, contained, and imagined as “aliens” or “illegal.”

Shelby Tisdale in Prescott

Date: Saturday, May 10, 2025

Time: 1 p.m., MST

Where: Highlands Center for Natural History, 1375 S. Walker Road, Prescott, AZ

Shelby Tisdale, author of No Place for a Lady: The Life Story of Archaeologist Marjorie, will give a presentation and sign books at Highlands Center for Natural History. Her presentation will highlight the obstacles young women faced in the early years of the development of southwest archaeology. Tisdale, retired director of the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College, is an award-winning author who has published more than forty book chapters, articles, and books on Southwest Native American art and women. Copies of the book will be available for purchase. This event is free and open to the public.

About the book:

In the first half of the twentieth century, the canyons and mesas of the Southwest beckoned and the burgeoning field of archaeology thrived. Among those who heeded the call, Marjorie Ferguson Lambert became one of only a handful of women who left their imprint on the study of southwestern archaeology and anthropology.

In this delightful biography, we gain insight into a time when there were few women establishing full-time careers in anthropology, archaeology, or museums. Shelby Tisdale successfully combines Lambert’s voice from extensive interviews with her own to take us on a thought-provoking journey into how Lambert created a successful and satisfying professional career and personal life in a place she loved (the American Southwest) while doing what she loved.

Stephen Strom in Salt Lake City

Date: Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Time: 7 -9 p.m., MST

Where: The King’s English Bookshop, 1511 South 1500 East, Salt Lake City, UT

Join Stephen Strom in an engaging discussion of his book, Forging a Sustainable Southwest: The Power of Collaborative Conservation, at The King’s English Bookshop. This book details efforts to craft the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, establish Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, protect Cienega Ranch, and create the Malpai Borderlands Group. It will appeal to anyone interested in grassroots efforts to protect the vital ecosystems of the western United States. Copies the book will be available to purchase.

This event is open to the public. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased here.

About the book:

Forging a Sustainable Southwest introduces readers to four conservation efforts that provide insight into how diverse groups of citizens have worked collaboratively to develop visions for land use that harmonized sometimes conflicting ecological, economic, cultural, and community needs. Through the voices of more than seventy individuals involved in these efforts, we learn how they’ve developed plans for protecting, restoring, and stewarding lands sustainably; the management and funding tools they’ve used; and their perceptions of the challenges that remain and how to meet them.

Meena Khandelwal in Iowa City

Date: Friday, March 7, 2025

Time: 12 p.m., CST

Where: Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA and via livestream

Meena Khandelwal, author of Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India, will speak at the Iowa City Public Library on “Climate Change, Gender and Biomass Cookstoves in India.” The event is sponsored by the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC) and presented in partnership with The University of Iowa Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. The event is free and open to the public and will also be available via livestream. Doors open at 11 a.m., and lunch will be provided. Please RSVP here for in-person event by March 5, 2025.

About the book:

Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles argues that the supposedly obsolete chulha persists because it offers women control over the tools needed to feed their families. Their continued use of old stoves alongside the new is not a failure to embrace new technologies but instead a strategy to maximize flexibility and autonomy. The chulha is neither the villain nor hero of this story. It produces particulate matter that harms people’s bodies, leaves soot on utensils and walls, and accelerates glacial melting and atmospheric warming. Yet it also depends on renewable biomass fuel and supports women’s autonomy as a local, do-it-yourself technology.

Meena Khandelwal employs critical social theory and reflections from fieldwork to bring together research from a range of fields, including history, geography, anthropology, energy and environmental studies, public health, and science and technology studies (STS). In so doing she not only demystifies multidisciplinary research but also highlights the messy reality of actual behavior.

William L. Bird in Scottsdale

Date: Saturday, April 26, 2025

Time: 11 a.m. – 12 p.m., MST

Where: Hotel Valley Ho, 6850 E. Main St., Scottsdale, AZ

William L. Bird, author of In the Arms of Saguaros: Iconography of the Giant Cactus, will give an illustrated talk at the 2025 Arizona Tiki Oasis event held at Hotel Valley Ho. Arizona Tiki Oasis is a celebration of Tiki, Mid-Century design, and the restoration and preservation of American Pop Culture. In his illustrated talk, Bird will explore the history of the saguaro cactus and how it became an icon of the American west. Tickets for this event are $20 and are available here.

About the book:

In the Arms of the Saguaros shows how, from the botanical explorers of the nineteenth century to the tourism boosters in our own time, saguaros and their images have fulfilled attention-getting needs and expectations. Through text and lavish images, this work explores the saguaro’s growth into a western icon from the early days of the American railroad to the years bracketing World War II, when Sun Belt boosterism hit its zenith and proponents of tourism succeed in moving the saguaro to the center of the promotional frame.

This book explores how the growth of tourism brought the saguaro to ever-larger audiences through the proliferation of western-themed imagery on the American roadside. The history of the saguaro’s popular and highly imaginative range points to the current moment in which the saguaro touches us as a global icon in art, fashion, and entertainment.

Michelle Téllez at McClelland Park in Tucson

Date: Friday, February 7, 2025

Time: 1 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., MST

Where: McClelland Park, 650 N. Park Ave., Tucson and via Zoom

Michelle Téllez, author of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoloberal Neglect, will discuss teaching and learning about marginalized histories in border regions as part of the Turbeville Speaker Series. In this presentation, Téllez will introduce two recently launched projects on Afro-Chicanx communities and Mexicana/Chicana activists in the borderlands. She will focus on the development, methodology and initial observations of this multi-sited research. This free event will be held at McClelland Park and will also be online in Zoom webinar format: register here for Zoom.

About the book:

Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas highlights the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a space of resistance, conviviality, agency, and creative community building where transformative politics can take place. It shows hope, struggle, and possibility in the context of gendered violences of racial capitalism on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Téllez shows that in creating the community of Maclovio Rojas, residents have challenged prescriptive notions of nation and belonging. Through women’s active participation and leadership, a women’s political subjectivity has emerged—Maclovianas.

Alan Pelaez Lopez at UA LGBTQ+ Institute

Date: Thursday, February 6, 2025

Time: 6 p.m., MST

Where: Environmental and Natural Resources 2 (1064 E Lowell St), Room S107, University of Arizona, Tucson register here; or register for Zoom event here

Alan Pelaez Lopez, editor of When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent, will give the Miranda Joseph Endowed Lecture “Dreaming as a Method Against Solitary Confinement,” at the University of Arizona. They will give the lecture via zoom video. Pelaez Lopez takes the act of individual and collective dreaming as serious methods that transgender Black women employ as they face anti-Black violence and transmisogyny inside detention centers, especially solitary confinement. Pelaez Lopez analyzes conversations they have with friends who have survived detention and bring their stories into conversation by analyzing newspaper articles, YouTube videos, and social media posts. Through this, the talk highlights the fact that carcerality attempts to govern the dream-world of migrants, especially when those dreams center on gender, sexuality, and kinship. Alan Pelaez Lopez (AfroZapotec) is a scholar, creative writer, cultural critic, and visual artist from Oaxaca, México. They will give lecture via Zoom video.

There will be beverages and light food available before the lecture starting at 5 p.m. in the ENR2 Courtyard outside of the lecture hall. The event is free and open to the public; register for in person here or register for Zoom event here.

About the book:

When Language Broke Open collects the creative offerings of forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent who use poetry, prose, and visual art to illustrate Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Telling stories of Black Latinidades, this anthology centers the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community. By exploring themes of memory, care, and futurity, these contributions expand understandings of Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, and their U.S.-based diasporas. The works collected in this anthology encompass a multitude of genres—including poetry, autobiography, short stories, diaries, visual art, and a graphic memoir—and feature the voices of established writers alongside emerging voices. Together, the contributors challenge everything we think we know about gender, sexuality, race, and what it means to experience a livable life.

Devon Mihesuah at Fort Collins Book Fest

Date: Saturday, February 8, 2025

Time: 4 – 5 p.m., MST

Where: The Lyric, 1209 N College Ave , Fort Collins, CO

Devon A. Mihesuah author of Dance of the Returned and The Hatak Witches, will speak at the Fort Collins Book Festival on February 8. She will participate in the “Horror with a Twist” panel that also features Stephen Graham Jones, author of I Was a Teenage Slasher, and Lindsay King-Miller, author of The Z Word. Mihesuah’s latest novel is The Bone Picker.

This event is free and open to the public.

About Dance of the Returned:

The disappearance of a young Choctaw leads Detective Monique Blue Hawk to investigate a little-known ceremonial dance. As she traces the steps of the missing man, she discovers that the seemingly innocuous Renewal Dance is not what it appears to be. After Monique embarks on a journey that she never thought possible, she learns that the past and future can converge to offer endless possibilities for the present. She must also accept her own destiny of violence and peacekeeping.

Virtual Event: Tim Z. Hernandez at Writers & Books

Date: Saturday, February 22, 2025

Time: 3 p.m. – 3:45 p.m., EST

Where: Virtual Event via Zoom

Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, will give a virtual talk for Writers & Books on February 22. He will be joined in conversation by Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate, 2015-2017. Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. He is an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing program. This virtual event will be streamed via Zoom and is free (option to pay what you wish), sign-up here.

About the book:

In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations—a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world.

They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man’s obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America’s past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.

Tim Z. Hernandez at Fort Collins Book Fest

Date: Saturday, February 15, 2025

Time: 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., MST

Where: Center for Creativity, 200 Mathers St., Fort Collins, CO

Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, will speak at the Center for Creativity for the Fort Collins Book Festival on February 15. He will join authors Teow Lim Goh (Bitter Creek) and Brandon Shimoda (The Afterlife is Letting Go) for a discussion on “Untold Histories: Exploring Marginalized Voices Through Memoir, Poetry, and Essay.” Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. He is an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing program.

This event is free and open to the public.

About the book:

The University of Arizona Press