Michael L. TrujilloIn Spring 2011, I organized a visit by cultural theorist Walter Mignolo to UNM. A number of UNM faculty and Dr. Mignolo plan to continue a dialogue on issues of decolonization and the Southwest.
Click here for a flyer of the events
Click here for information on the workshop
My Research
(Ethnography, Chicana/o Studies; Critical Regionalism; Western Marxism; and Representation)
My scholarship examines competing and sometimes contradictory regional, national, and transnational notions of Mexican American identity through original ethnographic research and critical analyses of existing ethnographic representations. This work brings perspectives drawn from anthropological ethnography, Chicana/o studies, and US-Mexican border studies to bear on American Studies. It contributes to the larger interdisciplinary effort to move beyond the exclusionary and exceptional notions of the American nation that can no longer be justified in our interconnected world. My current research utilizes the theoretical and methodological approach of critical regionalism and builds upon my previous work on Chicana/o identity and national notions of identity and race. A key component of this research is the construction of an ethnographic methodology and writing style appropriate for representing emerging American and Mexican-American experiences.
My research sites include the predominately Chicana/o or Hispanic northern New Mexican community of Española and US-Mexico border city of Juárez. In both locations, I track cultural forms and ethnographic representations through diverse regional and national discourses. My research in New Mexico culminated in my book The Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern New Mexico. This monograph is in production and was released in February 2010 by the University of New Mexico Press. Related essays were already published in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies (2008) and Cultural Dynamics (2006). UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center Press nominated the Aztlán article for the 2010 Latin American Studies Association Article Award.