Event Category: Public Lecture

William L. Bird at UA Herbarium Lunch Seminar

Date: Thursday, October 10, 2024

Time: 12 p.m., MST

Where: The University of Arizona Herbarium, 1130 South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ

William L. Bird, Jr. will discuss the history of saguaro cactus imagery drawn from his recent book,  In the Arms of the Saguaros.  His talk is titled “In the Arms of Saguaros: The Hunt for Iconic Collections and Pictures, 1880-1960.” The illustrated talk will picture the dramatic uptick in saguaro cactus imagery that followed the railroad’s penetration of the Sonoran Desert in the early 1880s—resulting in transplanted displays from Southern Pacific depots to world’s fairs that acquainted Americans with the plants firsthand. Not until the years bracketing the Second World War did the Southwest’s travel and tourism industry elevate the saguaro to the status of a regional icon. For many unfamiliar with the actual plant, the saguaro became an icon of the American West that by the early 1960s resided in a new and highly imaginative range.  Bring your own lunch to this Herbarium seminar.

William L. Bird Jr. is a curator emeritus of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. His interests lie at the intersection of politics, popular culture, and the history of visual display.  

About the book:

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.

Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan Discussion Panel in Tucson

When: Monday, November 4, 2024

Time: 10 a.m., MST

Where: Copper Room, Pima County Historic Courthouse, 115 N. Church Ave, Tucson

Stephen E. Strom will speak about his book, Forging a Sustainable Southwest: The Power of Collaborative Conservation and Pima County’s Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Strom will be joined by Karen Simms, Division Manager with Pima County’s new Conservation Lands and Resources Department, and Julia Fonseca, now retired from the County’s Office of Sustainability and Conservation.  The panel will be moderated by Larry Fisher, adjunct professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment. This free event is co-hosted by the Cienega Watershed Partnership and Pima County Conservation Lands and Resources. Forging a Sustainable Southwest will be available for purchase, and the author will be signing books.

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.

Author Rafael Martínez at the University of New Mexico

Date: Monday, October 28, 2024

Time: 4:30 p.m., MST

Where: Student Union Ballroom C, University of New Mexico, 1128 University Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM

Rafael Martínez will speak about his book Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States at the University of New Mexico (UNM).  Jasmine Hernandez, PhD student in Evolutionary Anthropology will also make a presentation.  A reception will follow in the El Centro Courtyard.  The event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by UNM Chicano/a Studies, UNM El Centrol de la Raza, and University Libraries.

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.”

David H. DeJong at Arizona Heritage Center in Tempe

Date: Saturday, December 14, 2024

Time: 10:30 a.m., MST

Where: Arizona Heritage Center, 1300 N. College Ave., Tempe, AZ

David H. DeJong, author of Damming the Gila: The Gila River Indian Community and the San Carlos Irrigation Project, 1900-1942, will give a book talk at the Arizona Heritage Center. DeJong is director of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, a construction project funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and designed to deliver water—from the Central Arizona Project, the Gila River, and other sources—to the Gila River Indian Reservation.

This event is presented by Arizona Historical Society, and is free and open to the public. Reserve your spot here.

About the book:

This volume continues to chronicle the history of water rights and activities on the Gila River Indian Reservation. Centered on the San Carlos Irrigation Project and Coolidge Dam, it details the history and development of the project, including the Gila Decree and the Winters Doctrine. Embedded in the narrative is the underlying tension between tribal growers on the Gila River Indian Reservation and upstream users. Told in seven chapters, the story underscores the idea that the Gila River Indian Community believed the San Carlos Irrigation Project was first and foremost for their benefit and how the project and the Gila Decree fell short of restoring their water and agricultural economy.

Damming the Gila is the third in a trio of important documentary works, beginning with DeJong’s Stealing the Gila and followed by Diverting the Gila. It continues the story of the Gila River Indian Community’s fight to regain access to their water.

Edward Anthony Polanco at the University of Houston

Date: Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Time: 4:30-6:30 p.m., CDT

Where: M.D. Anderson Library, Second Floor, Honors Commons (212C), University of Houston, 4333 University Dr., Houston, TX

Edward Anthony Polanco, author of Healing Like Our Ancestors: The Nahua Tiçitl, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Central Mexico, 1535-1660, will give a book talk on “Tiçiyotl in Mexico: Nahua Healing in Spanish Colonial Times,” at the University of Houston. Polanco is the Director of Indigenous Studies and an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech. His research interests include Mesoamerica, Mexico, El Salvador, Indigenous sovereignty, Nahua peoples, and decolonization. This free event is open to the public.

About the book:

Offering a provocative new perspective, Healing Like Our Ancestors examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahua healers in central Mexico and how their practices have been misconstrued and misunderstood in colonial records.

Early colonial Spanish settlers defined, assessed, and admonished Nahua titiçih (healing specialists) and tiçiyotl (healing knowledge) in the process of building a society in Mexico that mirrored Iberia. Nevertheless, Nahua survivance (intergenerational knowledge transfer) has allowed communities to heal like their ancestors through changes and adaptations. Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl (the Nahua ancestral language), to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih, their knowledge, and their practices within a Western complex.

 

Diego Báez at Brooklyn Book Festival

Date: Sunday, September 29, 2024

Time: 3 p.m., EDT

Where: North Stage,  Korean War Veterans Park, 277 Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn NY

Poet Diego Báez , author of  Yaguareté White will read with Hala Alyan (The Moon That Turns You Back),  Armen Davoudian (The Palace of Forty Pillars), and Jive Poetic (Skip Tracer) and discuss how the poem can investigate family, place, memory, and archives. The Brooklyn Book Festival panel will be moderated by Sarah Aziza. The Brooklyn Book Festival is New York City’s largest free literary festival and connects readers with local, national and international authors and publishers during the course of a celebratory literary week. The mission of the Brooklyn Book Festival is to celebrate published literature and nurture a literary cultural community through programming that cultivates and connects readers of diverse ages and backgrounds with local, national and international authors, publishers and booksellers.

About the book:

In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar. The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

David Lazaroff at Arizona History Museum in Tucson

Date: Saturday, February 1, 2025

Time: 10:30 a.m., MST

Where: Arizona History Museum, 949 E 2nd St., Tucson, AZ

David Lazaroff, author of Picturing Sabino: A Photographic History of a Southwestern Canyon, will give a book talk at the Arizona History Museum. Lazaroff is an independent writer and photographer living in Tucson, Arizona. He became fascinated by Sabino Canyon while working there as an environmental education specialist from 1977 to 1986.

This event is presented by Arizona Historical Society, and is free and open to the public. Reserve your spot here.

About the book:

Sabino Canyon, a desert canyon in the American Southwest near Tucson, Arizona, is enjoyed yearly by thousands of city residents as well as visitors from around the world. Picturing Sabino tells the story of the canyon’s transformation from a barely known oasis, miles from a small nineteenth-century town, into an immensely popular recreation area on the edge of a modern metropolis. Covering a century of change, from 1885 to 1985, this work rejoices in the canyon’s natural beauty and also relates the ups and downs of its protection and enjoyment.

Author David H. DeJong at Tumamoc Hill in Tucson

Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Time: 6 p.m., MST

Where: Tumamoc Hill Boathouse, 1675 W Anklam Rd, Tucson

David H. DeJong, author of Damming the Gila: The Gila River Indian Community and the San Carlos Irrigation Project, 1900-1942, will speak about his book on October 8, as part of the Tumamoc Author Series. DeJong is director of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, a construction project funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and designed to deliver water—from the Central Arizona Project, the Gila River, and other sources—to the Gila River Indian Reservation.

This talk will be held at the boathouse, at the base of Tumamoc Hill. The event is presented by Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, The University of Arizona Press, and The Southwest Center and is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase, and the author will be available for signing following the talk. Reserve your spot here.

About the book:

This volume continues to chronicle the history of water rights and activities on the Gila River Indian Reservation. Centered on the San Carlos Irrigation Project and Coolidge Dam, it details the history and development of the project, including the Gila Decree and the Winters Doctrine. Embedded in the narrative is the underlying tension between tribal growers on the Gila River Indian Reservation and upstream users. Told in seven chapters, the story underscores the idea that the Gila River Indian Community believed the San Carlos Irrigation Project was first and foremost for their benefit and how the project and the Gila Decree fell short of restoring their water and agricultural economy.

Damming the Gila is the third in a trio of important documentary works, beginning with DeJong’s Stealing the Gila and followed by Diverting the Gila. It continues the story of the Gila River Indian Community’s fight to regain access to their water.

Poet Diego Báez Reads in Chicago

Date: Saturday, September 14, 2024

Time: 5 p.m., CDT

Where: Metropolis Cafe, 1039 W. Granville Ave., Chicago

Poet Diego Báez, author of Yaguareté White, will read for “An Inconvenient Hour: Prose, Poetry, & Coffee” event at Metropolis Cafe in Chicago, Illinois. He will be joining poets Meghan Lamb and Victoria C. Flanagan in sharing their works for this Edgewater Institution hosted series.

About the book:

The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

Yaguareté White is a lyrical exploration of Paraguayan American identity and what it means to see through a colored whiteness in all of its tangled contradictions.

Poet Denise Low at Santa Rosa Arts Center

Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024

Time: 7-9 p.m., PST

Where: Santa Rosa Arts Center, 312 South A St., Santa Rosa, CA

Poet Denise Low will read from her book, House of Grace, House of Blood: Poems, for the Speakeasy Reading Series at Santa Rosa Arts Center. Low is a former Kansas Poet Laureate and a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets.

This in-person event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

About the book:

Intertwining a lyrical voice with historical texts, Low brings fresh urgency to the Gnadenhutten Massacre. In 1782, a renegade Pennsylvania militia killed ninety-six pacificist Christian Delawares (Lenapes) in Ohio. Those who escaped, including Indigenous eyewitnesses, relayed their accounts of the atrocity. Like Layli Longsoldier’s Whereas and Simon Ortiz’s from Sand Creek, Low delves into a critical incident of Indigenous peoples’ experiences. Readers will explore with the poet how trauma persists through hundreds of years, and how these peoples have survived and flourished in the subsequent generations.

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