Joel Zapata: Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains Through Time and Space

Hello everyone! I am Joel Zapata. I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. I research and write on the long-term history of the greater U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the Southwest, the South, and the lands where these regions meet, the Southern Great Plains.

At our 2019 Six Shooter session, I will be presenting on Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains Through Time and Space, a digital history and mapping project. This project is a platform through which both scholars and the wider public can find an Interactive Timeline and Map along with a curated online collection of materials regarding the Southern Plains’ Chicana/o Civil Rights Movement. A home page introducing the Chicana/o Movement along with a page describing the Southern Plains function in a similar way, as the introductory panels of a museum exhibition, gradually moving visitors into the Interactive Timeline and Map—the heart of this digital history project—and the online collection. Therefore, the project provides an accessible, digital museum experience that has not emerged within the walls of the Southern Plains’ museums and related institutions.

While I am looking forward to presenting on Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains Through Time and Space, I am even more thrilled to seeing everyone else’s digital history work.