Spring 2026 News and Events
Migrant deaths at the Texas –Mexico border: Who, when, where and what we do not know
Dr. Alberto Giordano | Texas State University
Friday, January 30 | 12:00 pm | Brazos Hall
Wednesday, February 4 | 6:00 pm | Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos | 211 Lee Street, San Marcos, TX 78666
Over the past forty years, thousands of people have died along the U.S.–Mexico border while fleeing poverty, armed conflict, violence, and disasters. This presentation shares the results of a three-year project that aims to create a comprehensive census of this tragedy on the U.S. side of the border, with focus on the Texas-Mexico border.
Carmen, In Their Own Image
Professor Jennifer Wilks | University of Texas at Austin
Thursday, March, 2026 | 2:00 PM | Theatre Building
In her genre-straddling historically minded project Carmen in Diaspora, Jennifer Wilks tracks a fascination with Carmen – the woman and the opera – through the Harlem Renaissance, post WWII Hollywood, early Hip Hop, post-Apartheid southern Africa and our current re-stagings. As Wilks puts it in her discussion of Carmen adaptions in Senegalese and South African films, “Why are Karmen and Carmen—and the women in their circles—so dissatisfied with the status quo? Why does expressing that discontent ‘make waves.’”
“Más Que Una Unión”:
Revisiting Public History at the César E. Chávez National Monument
Dr. Oliver Rosales | Bakersfield College
Tuesday, March 31, 2026 | 3:30 PM | TMH 104
Almost every textbook on twentieth century American history has a few sentences on Cesar Chavez and the California Farmworker Movement. Very few textbooks include expansive treatments of farmworkers and residents of rural California as central to American culture. Professor Oliver Rosales, Bakersfield College, has been part of working groups and design teams commissioned to find ways to include these broader histories in the exhibit spaces for the Cesar Chavez National Monument.
Multiracial Advocacy and Civil Rights:
Bakersfield, the Factory in the Fields
Dr. Oliver Rosales | Bakersfield College
Tuesday, March 31, 2026 | 6:00 pm
Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos | 211 Lee Street, San Marcos, TX 78666
Oliver Rosales’ award-winning book, Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Multiracial Activism and Segregation, examines the many ways Black, Asian and Latino communities linked to Bakersfield organized to challenge segregation in rural California after World War II. By understanding rural conditions, Civil Rights in Bakersfield makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the living constitution in the United States. Professor Oliver Rosales will share insights generated by working with farm labor and civil rights communities across the Central Valley.