CSSW News and Events

Carmen, In Their Own Image
Professor Jennifer Wilks | University of Texas at Austin
Thursday, March 26, 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.’”

Daughters of the Soil  
Candace Bellamy & Quinceola Reid | Wednesday, April 2, 2026  
11:00 am | TMH 104 & 6:00 pm | Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos  
211 Lee Street, San Marcos, TX 78666

Given the ways African American history (and women’s history) is often preserved through lived experience, oral tradition, and community memory, filmmaker Candace Bellamy speaks to the process of her next project, Daughters of the Soil.  Through contextual storytelling, conversation, and reflection, the spirit of Black cowgirls is revealed—their strength, grace, and unwavering commitment to a legacy often left untold.  

the light of your body  
ire’ne lara silva | Thursday, April 2, 2026 | 12:30 - 1:50 pm | Brazos Hall

ire’ne lara silva’s stories are rooted in mythical realism, in liminal spaces that don’t differentiate the voices of the dead from those of the living, that navigate borders and borderless places fearlessly to bring us the stories of gods, mortals and animals. This reading is in collaboration with the Hays Youth Poet Laureate Celebration (where silva will give a second reading) and Infrarrealista Review, a multilingual literary collective, journal, press, and educational organization who created the youth writing workshop and book contest.   

2026 Hays Youth Poet Laureate Celebration & Book Launch  
Carrie Fountain  & ire’ne lara silva | Texas State Poet Laureates  
Saturday, April 4, 2026 | 6:00 - 8:30 pm  
The Price Center | 222 W. San Antonio Street, San Marcos, Texas

The goal of the program is to not only get students to appreciate and value their own work, but to connect them with artists of similar backgrounds that have paved the way in pursuing careers in creative writing. The hope is to open doors to young writers and show them their dreams are possible! The Youth Poet Laureate program, rooted in Hays County, promotes literacy through poetry, and is an opportunity for both underserved youth and the local community to get excited about the literary arts.

2026 CSSW Undergraduate Research Conference 
Friday, April 10, 2026 | 10:00 am - 1:00 pm | Brazos Hall

This multidisciplinary undergraduate research conference will highlight and award original works relating to Texas, the Southwestern United States, and Northern Mexico.  We are interested in research that examines the region’s peoples, institutions, histories, cultures, and ecologies. Students are encouraged to submit research or creative works from past or current classes.

Pioneers of Latino Ministry: Claretians and the Evolving World of Catholic America   
A Book Talk and Evening with Deborah Kanter  
Saturday, April 11, 2026 | 11:00 am | Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos  
Saturday, April 11, 2026 | 6:00 pm | Immaculate Heart of Mary

Pioneers of Latino Ministry tells the story of the Claretian Missionaries, a male Catholic congregation, dedicated to Latin American immigrants and their families on the margins of US society since 1902. The Claretians’ accompaniment of Latinos makes them distinct in American Catholic history. When the first Claretians arrived from Mexico, Spanish speakers were a small, often unrecognized part of Catholic America. Today Latinos constitute half of US Catholics.

Embodied Borders: Navigating Transit Migration and U.S. Asylum Access
Madeline Baird | Ph.D. Candidate, University of Connecticut
Wednesday, April 15, 2026 | Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos | 6:00 pm
Friday, April 17, 2026 | Brazos Hall | 12:00 pm

Drawing from multi-sited fieldwork in Chiapas State, Mexico, Darién Province, Panama, and Texas, Madeline Baird presents ethnographic research examining the impact of border externalization on migration policies and the journeys of people seeking asylum at the U.S. border. 

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.

Distress Migration Symposium 
Dr. Sarah Blue | Texas State University 
Thursday, February 26, 2026 | 10:00 am - 3:30 pm | Flowers Hall 230

This symposium will examine the post-pandemic period of ‘distress migration’ to the US, featuring eight Mexican- and U.S.-based scholars who study the unprecedented migration flow towards the United States from 2021-2024: including its effects on migrants and local communities, an examination of the policies that shaped the migration, and the consequences of this migration in different locations and scales of analyses (local, regional, national).

Banished Citizens: A Book Talk by Marla Ramírez 
Dr. Marla Ramírez | University of Wisconsin - Madison 
Tuesday, March 3, 2026 | 3:30 pm | TMH 104

From 1921 to 1944, approximately one million ethnic Mexicans living in the United States were removed across the border to Mexico. What officials called “repatriation” was in fact banishment: 60 percent of those expelled were US citizens, mainly working-class women and children whose husbands and fathers were Mexican immigrants. Drawing on oral histories, transnational archival sources, and private collections, Marla A. Ramírez illuminates the lasting effects of coerced mass removal on three generations of ethnic Mexicans. 

Banished Citizens: Book Talk and Community Conversation  
Dr. Marla Ramírez | University of Wisconsin - Madison  
Tuesday, March 3, 2026 | 6:00 pm | Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos  
211 Lee Street, San Marcos, TX 78666

On February 26, 2012, Marla Ramírez attended an official ceremony in Sacramento acknowledging the state of California’s role in removing ethnic Mexicans from the state between 1921 and 1944. Often referred to as the Great Repatriation as well as the Banishment, an estimated half-a-million to a million of these removed individuals were citizens of the United States, of which the vast majority were women and children. Dr. Ramírez befriended some of the attendees, members of a family that had been removed and rendered nearly stateless. This book project – Banished Citizens: a History of the Women Who Endured Repatriation (Harvard, 2025) – emerged from these initial conversations in California.

The Labor Question in San Francisco's Chicano/Latino Movement  
Eduardo Contreras | TBD, April 2026 | TMH 104

Labor in the multifaceted Chicano/Latino movement has usually meant the United Farm Workers (UFW). Here, historian Eduardo Contreras will zero in on how the "labor question" regained its force in urban settings. Some focused their efforts on accessing work. Others built alliances with labor unions and championed unionization.  Activists and organizations revived the labor question, reframed it, and situated it energetically in el movimiento.