Projects

  • Northern New Mexican Hispanic Culture

    Research Area: Ethnic Studies
     

    TITLE: Los Ancianos: Visually Documenting Remnants of New Mexico’s Passing Century-Old Culture

    A community fighting against austere environmental and societal conditions not only occurs in other countries but there are still cases in modern America. The eldest generation, los ancianos, in the undocumented northern New Mexico villages are passing on, leaving a distinct culture, sense of place and strategies for survival only with their children’s memories. Assisted by local family and friends, I will document this village life from Cañon Plaza, La Madera and Vallecitos, located in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico.

    Most of these families live in very poor conditions; they rely on outhouses, wood-burning stoves, well water and lack indoor plumbing,. Their Spanish heritage, originating in 1598, and Pueblo native heritage, from centuries earlier, create a distinct culture separate mainstream America that is increasingly eroding by the late entrance of consumer capitalism in the last quarter in the twentieth-century.

    These images are foretaste the additional photographs to be taken and in the next 6 months. I will take higher quality photos of village life and family culture (e.g. portraits, home interiors, cultural events, vaquero cattle branding; Pueblo horno bread making; old post offices). I will audio record family histories, regional accents, their strategies for survival in English and the centuries-old Castillian Spanish dialect. Technically, I will be using a variety of photographic techniques and equipment: digitally processed panoramas; 4x5 color negative, black and white; medium format film; digital 35mm; use of light kits – strobe and hot lights; private black & white darkroom processing; audio recorder, microphones; and a video camera.

  • Kustom Kulture art

    Research Area: Popular Cultural Studies
     

    This project examines the visual culture of Kustom Kulture art scene surrounding car shows, artists and the Gasoline Gallery (formerly in El Segundo, CA).  Some of the results can be seen at http://tunnelflux.com/.

  • Social Studies of Astronomy

     

    These are results that arise from the social studies of astronomy carried out mostly from the NSF grant #0956589.  See the web site http://nsf.teknoculture.com/.
    Five kinds of astronomers work with large data sets: cosmologists, data analysts, instrumentation people, observers, and numerical theorists. Each of these career trajectories can diverge and converge in and out of collaborations with each other and perform different kinds of work. Nonetheless, each group defines and wrangles data differently. This poster characterizes their different meanings of data, analytic skills, techniques, and technologies. It also identifies some sites and patterns of convergence. We plot these collaborative relationships in bi-partite graphs. These emergent characteristics of the astronomy workforce have implications for curricula, pedagogies, and the division of labor in research collaborations.

  • Informal Science Education

    Research Area: Learning
     

     

    This informal science education research project seeks to develop a learning ecology based on Latina/o traditional/ancestral knowledge, astronomy and critical media literacy in an informal learning setting. The first phase to this end is a community-based ethnography to document the visual culture; consumption, production and uses of technology; and learning styles associated with the traditional/ancestral knowledge of low-income urban Latina/o families. In the next phase, researchers will combine these findings with custom-made multimedia, proven astronomy lesson plans to evaluate and revise learning products. Astronomy provides an opportunity to use Mayan archeological findings and successful astronomer career histories obtained from previous National Science Foundation research. While delivering phase two multimedia lesson plans in an after-school setting, researchers will instruct students and parents using learning strategies based on the ethnic STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) cultural migration model defined in this project. This model states a Latina/o student makes a cultural migration toward increased participation in modernity, namely from a home ethnic culture to mainstream American and then again into the culture of science.  We assert this project's approach would reduce STEM attrition among Latinas/os and time-consuming confusion arising from a cognitive dissonance in Latina/o science students by naturalizing STEM learning using familiar examples and analogies.

     

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