The University of Arizona Press

When: April 13, 2023, 1:00 p.m.

Where: Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, Toyota Auditorium, University of Tennessee, 1640 Cumberland Ave., Knoxville, TN

Andrew Curley will speak at the University of Tennessee about his book, Carbon Sovereignty. Curley will discuss his ethnography that documents a 2013 process of lease renewal between the Navajo Nation, the largest American Indian tribe in the United States, and the owners of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS), the most important coal-fired power plant in Arizona.

Carbon Sovereignty offers a deep dive into the complex inner workings of energy shift in the Navajo Nation. Geographer Andrew Curley, a member of the Navajo Nation, examines the history of coal development within the Navajo Nation, including why some Diné supported coal and the consequences of doing so. He explains the Navajo Nation’s strategic choices to use the coal industry to support its sovereignty as a path forward in the face of ongoing colonialism. Carbon Sovereignty demonstrates the mechanism of capitalism through colonialism and the construction of resource sovereignty, in both the Navajo Nation’s embrace and its rejection of a coal economy.

When: Monday, April 17, 2023, 2:00 p.m.

Where: MCB 101, Michelson Hall, University of Southern California, 1002 Childs Way, Los Angeles, CA

Andrew Curley will speak about his new book Carbon Sovereignty as part of a panel discussion of “The Emerging Extracitvist Frontiers of the Green Energy Transition in the Americas,” at the University of Southern California. Other panel members include Javiera Barandiarán, Dustin Mulvaney, Teresa Montoya, and Discussant James Blair. The event is co-sponsored by the USC Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life and the USC Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies. Register for the event here.

Carbon Sovereignty offers a deep dive into the complex inner workings of energy shift in the Navajo Nation. Geographer Andrew Curley, a member of the Navajo Nation, examines the history of coal development within the Navajo Nation, including why some Diné supported coal and the consequences of doing so. He explains the Navajo Nation’s strategic choices to use the coal industry to support its sovereignty as a path forward in the face of ongoing colonialism. Carbon Sovereignty demonstrates the mechanism of capitalism through colonialism and the construction of resource sovereignty, in both the Navajo Nation’s embrace and its rejection of a coal economy.

When: Friday, April 21, 2023, 3 p.m.

Where: University of Southern California, Taper Hall 420, 3501 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA

Anthony Macías will give a public lecture at USC titled: “An Actor Should Have No Frontiers, No Barriers”: Chicanas and Chicanos Surpassing Stereotypes in Theater, Film, and Television. This talk analyzes Latino-Latina representation by focusing on the careers of Anthony Quinn, Katy Jurado, Robert Beltran, Lupe Ontiveros, and Ricardo Montalban.

Macías’ book Chicano-Chicana Americana, explores American national character by showing how ethnic Mexicans attained social and cultural status through fair, open competition without a radical realignment of political or economic structures. Their creative achievements demanded dignity and earned respect. Anthony Macías argues that these performances demonstrated a pop culture pluralism that subtly changed mainstream America, transforming it from the mythological past of the Wild West to the speculative future of science fiction.

Anthony Macías is an associate professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of the book Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, 1935–1968. He has also published on bebop, hip hop, punk rock, Latin music, bandleader Gerald Wilson, Jewish Americans, U.S. historiography, Hollywood westerns, gay rights and Dog Day Afternoon, and the pan-American hemispheric imaginary.

Professor Emeritus Daniel Arreola will speak about his book, Postcards from the Sonora Border: Visualizing Place through a Popular Lens, 1900s-1950s, as part of the State of Arizona Research Library’s 2023 Arizona Author Series

When: 1 p.m. MST, Thursday, February 2nd
Where: Zoom
Register

After the talk, there will be time for questions from the audience.

About the Book
Young men ride horses on a dusty main road through town. Cars and gas stations gradually intrude on the land, and, years later, curiosity shops and cantinas change the face of Mexican border towns south of Arizona. Between 1900 and the late 1950s, Mexican border towns came of age both as centers of commerce and as tourist destinations. Postcards from the Sonora Border reveals how images—in this case the iconic postcard—shape the way we experience and think about place.

Making use of his personal collection of historic images, Daniel D. Arreola captures the evolution of Sonoran border towns, creating a sense of visual “time travel” for the reader. Supported by maps and visual imagery, the author shares the geographical and historical story of five unique border towns—Agua Prieta, Naco, Nogales, Sonoyta, and San Luis Río Colorado.

Postcards from the Sonora Border introduces us to these important towns and provides individual stories about each, using the postcards as markers. No one postcard view tells the complete story—rather, the sense of place emerges image by image as the author pulls readers through the collection as an assembled view. Arreola reveals how often the same locations and landmarks of a town were photographed as postcard images generation after generation, giving a long and dynamic view of the inhabitants through time. Arranged chronologically, Arreola’s postcards allow us to discover the changing perceptions of place in the borderlands of Sonora, Mexico.

Daniel Arreola is a cultural and historical geographer who specializes in the study of the Mexican American borderland and Hispanic cultures in America. He is the recipient of the Paul P. Vouras Medal from The American Geographical Society for his studies in regional geography, and the Carl O. Sauer Distinguished Scholarship Award and the Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award from the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers for his Mexican borderland studies. His Tejano South Texas (2002) book won the prestigious Jackson Prize from the Association of American Geographers

Arreola is the author of seven scholarly books including The Mexican Border Cities: Landscape Anatomy and Place Personality (with James R. Curtis), Tejano South Texas: A Mexican American Cultural Province, and Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places: Community and Cultural Diversity in Contemporary America. He is presently writing a book titled “The Mexican Restaurant in America, a Journey across Time and Place.” He is an Arizona State University, Professor Emeritus, and currently resides in Placitas, New Mexico.

When: 1:00 p.m., Saturday, March 18, 2023

Where: Phippen Museum, 4701 Highway 89 North, Prescott, Arizona

Tom Zoellner shares stories from his book, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona, about astonishing women who have shaped history and pioneered new ways of thinking. From Native women who re-enact their coming-of-age ceremony through the daily act of running through the canyon country, to a Latina graduate of Arizona State who becomes a trailblazing get-out-the-vote activist for the Democrats, to a dynamic Prescott native who sought a place with the Republicans, to the lauded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who remains a source of inspiration, the book is a celebration of Arizona’s women of all backgrounds.

About the book:

Rim to River is the story of an extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.