International Women’s Day: Celebrating Feminist Scholarship from the Americas

The Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas invites you to join us as we celebrate International Women's Day with keynote speakers Prof. Michelle Tellez and Prof. Esther Hernández-Medina. Together, they will help the audience explore the critical themes of resistance, survival, intersectionality, and reproductive justice in the Americas.

Prof. Tellez's lecture is titled "Fronteriza Imaginaries: Women's Leadership in the Borderlands" and Prof. Hernández-Medina's lecture is titled “Take your Rosaries out of Our Ovaries:” the Fight for Women's Right to Choose in the Dominican Republic.


Merrill Cultural Center Schedule:

1:30p.m.-3:00p.m. ~ Dr. Hernandez-Medina, Pomona College

Discussant: Michelle Gomez Parra, PhD candidate in Sociology with emphasis in Latin American and Latino Studies

3:00p.m.-3:20p.m. ~ Break with light snacks

3:20p.m.-4:50p.m. ~ Dr. Michelle Tellez, University of Arizona

Discussant: Roxanna Villalobos, PhD candidate in Sociology with emphasis in Latin American and Latino Studies


About Keynote Speaker: Prof. Michelle Téllez

Prof. Michelle Téllez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona. Her public and academic scholarship focuses on transnational community formations, mothering, and gendered migration along the U.S./Mexico borderlands. Her work has been published in journals such as: Gender & Society, Feminist Formations, and Aztlán and featured online in Truth Out, The Feminist Wire, and Latino Rebels. She has a long history in grassroots organizing projects, digital media, and community-based arts and performance. She co-edited The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolución, published in March of 2019 and is the author of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect published in September 2021. In 2022, she her Co-PIs were awarded two Andrew W. Mellon-Foundation funded Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative Grants for new work on Afro-Chicanx communities and Mexicana/Chicana activists in the borderlands. You can find out more about her work at: http://www.michelletellez.com.


About Keynote Speaker: Prof. Esther Hernández-Medina

Dr. Esther Hernández-Medina is a feminist scholar, public policy expert and activist from the Dominican Republic, with a particular interest in how historically marginalized groups such as women, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities are able to change and influence public policy in their favor. She has done research on this topic in Mexico, Brazil, and her own country by looking at citizen participation in urban policies in São Paulo and Mexico City, the history of and recent achievements by the Dominican feminist movement, and the participatory budgeting model in the Dominican Republic and São Paulo. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Pomona College at the Latin American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies Programs. Her academic work has been published in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Caribbean Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, and Estudios Sociales. As an activist, she is the co-founder of Tertulia Feminista Magaly Pineda, along with Yildalina Tatem Brache in the Dominican Republic. Named after the most important contemporary feminist leader in the country and one of the most renown ones in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Tertulia aims to provide a safe space for women of all ages, backgrounds, and sexual orientations to debate and learn about both historical and contemporary issues from a feminist perspective.


Light refreshments will be served outdoors in the courtyard of the Merrill Cultural Center