Forgotten Frontera 2022

Forgotten Frontera 2022 Accomplishments

Spring 2022

A first large meeting of all Forgotten Frontera grant participants was held January 20, 2022. Frontera Group, formed of WTAMU faculty, staff, and students, had its initial meeting 12 March and met regularly thereafter to discuss WTAMU HSI issues, including curricular matters, student affairs, and institutional practices. Meeting with Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum (PPHM) head archivist Warren Stricker led to newly created “best practices” information and consent forms for oral history collection. We initiated arrangements with our year one speaker, Joel Zapata, and initiated planning for the Fall 2022 visit.

CSAW interns took an informal student poll with the question, “What does WTAMU as a Hispanic-Serving Institution mean to you?” which brought useful confirmation of the sense that students felt a lack of institutional attention in this regard. The interns also created Forgotten Frontera logos, which were used, along with NEH logos, on Forgotten Frontera publicity.

CSAW Director Alex Hunt gave a conference paper, “Springs of the Llano,” at the 54 ^th Annual Comparative Literature Conference, Texas Tech University, April 1-2; this paper highlighted the Hispanic presence on the high plains via “ La Pista de Agua Viva” [Trail of Living Water] in the region. The Lubbock trip led to an organizational meeting with FF speakers Joel Zapata and Cordelia Barrera on the first of April. To promote upcoming grant activities, Hunt also gave talks in the community, “Forgotten Frontera” for the Panhandle Language Teachers Association on February 18 and “CSAW’s Forgotten Frontera Project at WTAMU” for Los Barrios de Amarillo on May 25, 2022.

Courses Taught

ENGL 4360 (American Regionalism): “Ethnic Homelands, Migrations, and Place”

SPAN 2315 (Spanish for Heritage Speakers): “The Hispanic High Plains”

Summer 2022

In summer of 2022, planning continued for Fall events, including establishing Caprock High School in Amarillo as the venue for the fall outreach Community Conversation. We also undertook some publicity work. Forgotten Frontera interns ran an informational table at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum for their exhibit, “Quinceañera Traditions,” on June 2. The goals were to make the public aware of Forgotten Frontera and its goals, to publicize the fall Zapata lecture, and to sign up potential oral history interviewees. Hunt made an unsuccessful appeal to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, bringing them representatives of the “Refusing to Forget” project that could have brought them a pre-formed exhibit, “Life and Death on the Border,” concerning Mexican American border history.

Fall 2022

In Fall 2022, we held the first Forgotten Frontera event, featuring visiting scholar Joel Zapata. Zapata delivered a lecture on campus at WTAMU, took part in a community conversation at Caprock High School in Amarillo, met with grant personnel, had a lunch meeting with Frontera Group, interacted with WTAMU students, and participated in a tour of a historical/archeological site, the Sandoval Plaza, on private ranch land.

Conferencing picked up in Fall 2022. Andy Reynolds and Alex Hunt attended the Western Literature Association meeting in October, forming the following panel, which was well-attended and received:

WLA Public Intellectual Panel (Santa Fe, October 2022)

THE LLANEROS: PEOPLE OF THE SOUTERN PLAINS

Alex Hunt (PI), “Forgotten Frontera Ethnography: Texas/New Mexico Connections in the Writings of Fabiola Cabeza de Baca and Samuel Leo Gonzales”

Andy Reynolds (Project Member), “Plazas, Cañones and Acequias: A Cartographic Narration of the Mexican Llano Estacado”

John Beusterien (TTU collaborator), “The Thirsty Llano Estacado: The Manuel Maés Ballad Corpus”

In addition, Hunt attended the Western History Association in San Antonio, Texas, October 14. He joined a roundtable, “Latinx Public History: Taking Our History Out of the Shadows,” and gave remarks under the title, “Forgotten Frontera: Latina/o Histories and the Center for the Study of the American West.”