Department of Ethnic Studies Professor Jessica Ordaz, Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies, is hosting a monthly coffee hour for department majors, minors, and prospective students. Stop by Ketchum (KTCH) 277 between 10-11am on October 3 and November 7 to grab some coffee, pastries (vegan + GF options) and connect with other students and faculty. We look forward to seeing you there! 

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Call for Proposals
Submissions due: Oct. 1, 2021
Editors: Arturo J. Aldama and Jessica Ordaz

Violence, Migration, and Detention during Trump’s Reign of Terror and Beyond

Although rooted in a long history and lineage of state violence and immigration enforcement, the Trump administration (2016-2020) enacted countless examples of white supremacy, anti-migrant violence, vigilante shootings and assaults, family separation, child abductions, caging of children, border policing, the increased incarceration of Latinx migrants, the sexual and reproductive abuse of migrants, and rhetoric and policies that framed them as criminals, gangsters, and rapists. 

This book seeks interdisciplinary scholarship and artistic responses that consider the impacts of Trump’s immigration and detention policies and the whole scale criminalization of BIPoC migrants indigenous to Abya Yala (The Americas and the Caribbean). We seek work by established leaders and by rising stars from various areas and disciplines including Chicana/o/x, Latina/o/x Studies, Ethnic Studies, Queer, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Latin American Studies, American Studies, Immigration Studies, History, Critical Refugee Studies, Critical Indigeneity’s, Cultural Studies, and Theater, Performance, Fashion, Visual and Communication Studies. We are also interested in work by and about artists who create counter-narratives in visual, performative, and sonic, or multi-modal registers that push back on the demonization of migrants and create other registers of trauma, pain, sadness, hope, solidarity, and abolition.

The volume will also consider work that addresses nativism, vigilante violence, and the cruelty of border and detention policies before Trump’s reign of terror as well as futurist visions. We are especially interested in considering work that speaks to and challenges white supremacy, toxic masculinities, transphobia, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, empire, global militarism, neoliberalism, transnational histories, indigenous migrations, and queer of color critique.

Some topics to be addressed may include:

• Family separation, unaccompanied minors, and the zero-tolerance policy
• Migrant children, trauma, and state violence
• Migrant detention centers and refugee camps
• Immigration enforcement and toxic rape culture
• Colonialities of power and border patrol violence
• ICE and predatory masculinities, cruelty, internalized racism
• Medical and sterilization abuse in migrant detention
• The operations of the detention and deportation regime and technologies of power
• Migrant incarceration and the carceral state
• Abolish ICE, prison abolition, migrant resistance, and transborder solidarities 
• Migrant deportability and illegality
• Migrant death and necropolitics
• Biometrics, surveillance, and border security
• Border militarization and migrant crossings
• ICE raids
• Migrant smuggling
• The business of migration and Homeland Security
• Deportation, drugs, and gangs
• Trump’s border wall

Please submit either a  3-page proposal, a 15–25-page paper draft,  and/or original creative work,  and CV to arturo.aldama@colorado.edu and jessica.ordaz@colorado.edu.

Respectfully,

Arturo J. Aldama 
Chair and Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, �鶹��Ƶ 

Jessica Ordaz
Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies, �鶹��Ƶ 

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Dr. Yesika Ordaz has been accepted for a summer fellowship program at Duke University called, Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement (SITPA). 

Congrats Dr. Ordaz!

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Please note the following corrections to the linked article about Dr. Ordaz:

CHANGE, “systemic and cultural forms of conversation and activism” to “systemic and institutional forms of oppression and activism”

CHANGE “These spaces need to be mandatory” to “These spaces are essential”

CHANGE “At the heart of ethnic studies is activism,” to “At the heart of ethnic studies is a struggle for social justice”

To read the article click here

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Dr. Ordaz grew up in Brentwood, California. She is the granddaughter of bracero agricultural laborers and the daughter of migrant workers. At the age of 18 she left home to pursue higher education and became a first gen college student at UC Santa Barbara triple majoring in Women’s Studies, History and Global Studies. It was here she was involved in organizations such as El Congreso and Women United for Justice, Education, and Revolution (M.U.J.E.R.), groups that promote cultural enrichment, higher education, and political consciousness within the Chicana/o community.  Dr. Ordaz then continued to graduate school receiving her Masters in American Studies from Cal State, Fullerton and her PhD in American History from UC Davis. 

Dr. Ordaz is currently working on a book manuscript that will historicize the roots and functions of immigration detention centers by exploring the background of the El Centro Immigration Detention Center in Southern California. 

Having just moved to Colorado in July, she is super excited to get to know her colleagues and grad students in the Ethnic Studies department, the student body at CU Boulder, along with exploring Denver and the beautiful surrounding areas. 

The Department of Ethnic Studies is extremely thrilled to welcome Dr. Ordaz!

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