What did California look like?

I published an academic article this spring – “Picturing Mexican America in the Age of Realism” – in which I argued that scholars should look to surviving photographs of 19th century Mexican Californian women to... [ view full abstract ]

I published an academic article this spring – “Picturing Mexican America in the Age of Realism” – in which I argued that scholars should look to surviving photographs of 19^th century Mexican Californian women to develop strategies for reading their oral histories as literary rather than historical texts. This article began in a 2016 C19 seminar on the Latino 19^th century.  Heavily influenced by Sarah Blackwood’s work I began thinking about the relationship between visual culture and writing about vision.  My explorations quickly took tidy, scholarly shape, evolving into an article advocating for innovative methods to render quirky texts more academically legible.  There is much visual material still to see in California’s archives, and I continue to be drawn to this topic.  As Los Angeles faces an unprecedented housing crisis and historically Mexican neighborhoods are being gentrified faster than you can say “organic vegan tacos” it feels more important than ever to keep images of Mexican California alive.  I cannot bring myself to bury these images and ideas in academic texts where they will be at best ignored, at worst dismissed as insufficiently “rigorous.” Though I have met with editors at both LARB and Zócalo, I’m not convinced this is the route I want to take either. I am drawn to this seminar for the opportunity to think through other publishing formats and venues with likeminded scholars who will challenge me to consider how and for whom I want to present this material.