6:30 p.m.
Words on Wheels
Querencia: Exploring and Narrating a Sense of Place
Virtual Zoom
Wednesday, November 17
6:30 p.m.
Free | Online | Open to the Public
What does it mean to think and to write about place?
Join us for a Words on Wheels workshop with ASU professors Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, PhD and Rafael Martínez, PhD that explores the concept of querencia which means a love of or attachment to place.
This workshop will invite us to craft our own querencia narratives that take into account where we are from and the various places we call home. We will challenge ourselves to move beyond nostalgia and memory to write more critically about querencia. We will consider the many different social, political, and environmental factors that may influence the way we think and write about our sense of place.
Presented by
Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, PhD
Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez is the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and an Associate Professor of English in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University. She teaches courses in Chicanx and Indigenous literature and is a faculty member in the M.A. Narrative Studies program at the Poly campus. She is the author of Colonial Legacies in Chicana/o Literature: Looking through the Kaleidoscope (2020), with the University of Arizona Press. She also is the co-editor of Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico Homeland (2020), with the University of New Mexico Press.
Rafael A. Martínez, PhD
Rafael Martínez is an assistant professor of Southwest Borderlands in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. Rafael’s work focuses on immigration, migration, the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and the American Southwest. At ASU, he teaches courses on the American Southwest, the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and Narrative Studies. Rafael is also a faculty member in the M.A. Narrative Studies program in CISA.