stacey alex | The Ohio State University (original) (raw)

Papers by stacey alex

The Oxford Handbook of Latino Studies, 2018

This article provides an overview of Latinx folklore studies and the diversity of folkloric expre... more This article provides an overview of Latinx folklore studies and the diversity of folkloric expression across US Latinx communities. Through interviews, it examines how Latinx artists engage with folklore in the Midwest as cultural capital for place-making while combating discursive and social erasure including barriers to state arts funding, as well as social and geographic isolation from more widely recognized Latinx cultural centers. Historically, Latinx groups have moved to the Midwest to escape oppression. While often finding more socially benign spaces, they continue to confront racism. The corrido musical form offers nineteenth-century examples of folkloric storytelling as resistance to the racialized dispossession of South Texan Mexicans, while contemporary corridos recount the travails and perseverance of undocumented immigrants. Latinx folkloric music, dance, storytelling, visual arts, and festivals are investigated as vehicles to support social justice and solidarity.

Prose Studies, 2020

This article analyzes undocumented Latinx nonfiction lifewriting as creative resistance to dehuma... more This article analyzes undocumented Latinx nonfiction lifewriting as creative resistance to dehumanization and as a vehicle for new conceptions of Latinx subjectivities and experiences. It investigates how The Undocumented Americans (2020) by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio and Undocumented: A Dominican Boy's Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League (2016) by Dan-el Padilla Peralta counter the way that undocumented individuals are treated as disposable and invite audiences to imagine new social realities. Drawing on Daniel Solorzano and Dolores Delgado Bernal's work (2001), this article analyzes the discursive expression of transformational resistance to shape social subjects by exposing the fallacies of meritocracy and the racialized, systemic nature of oppressions. Both Cornejo Villavicencio and Padilla Peralta combat the naturalization migrant suffering as inevitable and forge a politics of possibility. Due to their relative privilege, these authors act as surrogates to publicize and justify everyday undocumented disobedience that otherwise would not be shared for fear of deportation.

The Routledge Companion To Gender, Sex And Latin American Culture, 2018

US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal, 2020

Abstract:In this article, the authors provide an account of their two-level oral history project ... more Abstract:In this article, the authors provide an account of their two-level oral history project conducted at Our Lady of Guadalupe Center in partnership with Ohio State University (OSU) faculty and graduate students in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. In this performance-based ethnographic project, OSU faculty and students first conducted oral histories of Alma Santos, the daughter of the Guadalupe Center's founder, and of the current director, Ramona Reyes, as well as shorter interviews with the Guadalupe Center's community theater ensemble. A performance was then created based on the oral histories and interviews, and performed by an ensemble of community members. The authors first provide a brief history of the Guadalupe Center and Hilltop, and then analyze the Spanish-speaking performance with a focus on community cultural wealth, placemaking, theater of place, and family.

Humanities: 3rd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)A five-y... more Humanities: 3rd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)A five-year embargo was granted for this item

Spanish as a Heritage Language, 2021

In this article, the authors analyze the creation of a performance piece in both English and Span... more In this article, the authors analyze the creation of a performance piece in both English and Spanish with undergraduate students to creatively combine Latina/o/x oral histories and performance artists’ personal experiences as Spanish speakers. Each performer selected an oral history collected by one of the authors in the digital and publicly available archive, Oral Narratives of Latin@s in Ohio. Through a Latino Critical Race Theory framework, and an analysis of the undergraduate student performers’ and audience’s reactions, the authors demonstrate how this kind of performance can be used as a pedagogical tool to strengthen Spanish as a heritage language learners’ sense of belonging in predominantly white educational spaces by contesting epistemic violence and forging Latina/o/x networks of solidarity. Linguistic and cultural maintenance in the face of racialization is conceptualized as a tool for place-making and social justice, particularly in the Midwestern communities that have...

American Book Review, 2020