Embodied Encuentros

“Embodied Encuentros brilliantly prepares the next generation of oral history practitioners with a radical yet necessary approach to the field. Rooted in feminist ethics and pláticas/testimonio methodologies, this book also guides readers in conducting oral histories that are caring, egalitarian, and restorative.” —Jesús Jesse Esparza, author of Raza Schools: The Fight for Latino Educational Autonomy in a West Texas Borderlands Town

“From gentrification to joy-mapping, migration to transformation, Foulis transforms testimonio and pláticas into power tools that amplify community voices as vital, breathing knowledge repositories and obliterates tired oral history paradigms once and for all.” —Frederick Luis Aldama, University of Texas at Austin

“Foulis beautifully draws on her experiences as a teacher and as a researcher, demonstrating how to do engaged and ethical oral history with communities. Embodied Encuentros makes a strong argument for the power of oral history when working with stories of migration, identity, and belonging.” —Anna Sheftel, coeditor of Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice

“Embodied Encuentros offers a decolonial framework for oral history grounded in feminist ethics, language justice, and community-based participatory research. Bridging theory and praxis, the book advances nonextractive, collaborative methodologies, making it essential reading for scholars and students in oral history, Latina/o/e studies, ethnic studies, digital humanities, and feminist theory.” —Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Director of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Program

In Embodied Encuentros, Elena Foulis offers a practical guide for completing ethical fieldwork in Latina/o/e communities, emphasizing equitable and culturally sustaining practices for gathering oral histories. In her critical decolonial model, Foulis centers the agency of the people within these communities while considering the diversity and complexity of their experiences. In doing so, she advocates for the importance of building oral history archives that challenge our understandings of Latina/o/e peoples.

Foulis provides a conceptual framework for building on community knowledge that considers language, cultural practices, gender, and race. She suggests ways to involve students in ethical research; collect evolving oral histories; employ a language justice approach that acknowledges linguistic oppression, translanguaging, and bilingualism as essential aspects of this community; and consider the importance of digital archives for the creation of multimedia projects that foster community pláticas. Grounded in both theoretical approaches and a feminist ethics praxis, Embodied Encuentros ultimately outlines an important model for doing collaborative, ethical research—not only within Latina/o/e communities but within other minoritized communities as well.

Elena Foulis is Associate Professor and Director of the Spanish Language Studies Program at Texas A&M University–San Antonio. She is the coeditor of Working en comunidad: Service-Learning and Community Engagement with U.S. Latinas/os/es.

Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword by Felipe Hinojosa

Chapter 1     Tejiendo Historias: A Feminist Ethics Approach to Working with Latina/o/e Communities
Chapter 2     Con Cariño: Embodied Encounters of Collaboration
Chapter 3     Creando Archivos Digitales: Digital Humanities and Oral History
Chapter 4     La Historia Oral como Vehículo a la Expresión Creativa: Oral History and Performance
Chapter 5     Conmemorando a una Comunidad: Robb Elementary, Uvalde, Texas
Conclusion     The Intimacy of Oral History

Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index