A group of faculty affiliated with the Chican@ & Latin@ Studies Program, in partnership with the Wisconsin Latinx History Collective (WLHC), the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS), and other collaborators, has secured funding from the National Archives to support the initial planning phase of a 10-year project titled ¡Presente!: Documenting Latinx History in Wisconsin through a Collaborative Digital Edition. Led by Profs. Almita Miranda (Geography/CLSP), Diego Román (Curriculum & Instruction), Cheryl Jiménez Frei (History, UW-Eau Claire), and Andrea Arenas (Emerita in CLSP), the team will create a collaborative digital edition featuring previously unavailable primary sources on Latinx life in Wisconsin. Using documents drawn from new oral history interviews, photographs, organizational papers, and material from private collections, the digital edition will highlight the contributions and everyday life of Latinx residents in rural and urban regions of the state. The result will be a searchable, open-access digital repository holding as many as 3,000 historical primary sources on Latinx communities in Wisconsin sorted into thematic sections. Using these materials, the team will organize community education events and prepare K-12 curriculum, university courses incorporating the collections, Story Maps, bibliographies, and other resources. Bringing together faculty and community researchers from a variety of disciplines, the project will enrich public knowledge of the history, presence, and contemporary significance of Latinx populations in Wisconsin and the Midwest.
- latinxwisconsin