Mexico Remixed Scholarship

Research, Exhibits, Conferences

Indiana University Bloomington is a global leader in contemporary arts and humanities scholarship, with particular strengths in fields related to Mexico and Mexican culture.

Faculty and students from academic units such as the School of Global and International Studies and the Latino Studies Program contribute to a wide array of academic subjects, from the history and cultures of indigenous peoples to the global impact of Mexican cuisine.

The Bloomington campus features world-class collections of books, manuscripts, artworks, and other Mexican cultural objects curated by units such as IU Libraries, the Lilly Library, and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures.

Each year, IU Bloomington hosts a number of academic conferences that bring together established and emerging scholars working in disciplines ranging from translation to contemporary Latino music.

Mexico Remixed highlights some of the finest aspects of academic life at IU Bloomington and encourages scholars of all ages and levels of expertise to explore the boundaries of current knowledge and imagine new horizons of understanding.

Exhibits

Lilly Library, Slocum Room. Jan. 9 - May 4

The Lilly Library’s collection of sixteenth-century Mexican imprints is a remarkable resource for the study of the development of the press in the New World. This impressive collection of several dozen books and broadsides, which range in date from 1544 to 1600, includes religious texts, philosophical works, bilingual dictionaries, and Inquisition documents. All sixteenth-century Mexican imprints are rare, and this exhibition offers a remarkable opportunity to view the work of the earliest printers in the Western hemisphere, including Juan Pablos, Antonio de Espinosa, and Pedro Ocharte.

Grunwald Gallery. Opens Jan. 9

The Work of Ana Teresa Fernández

For Mexican-born, Bay-area based artist Ana Teresa Fernández, performance is a primary research tool in her complex multimedia practice. Her work often begins as a time-based action or social gesture that explores the politics of intersectionality. Her oeuvre includes community-based projects, public art, sculpture, performance, video, and larger-than-life oil paintings that critique cultural assumptions and stereotypes about Latina women and illuminate the psychological and physical barriers that define gender, race, and class in Western society and the global south.

Fernández has exhibited at the Denver Art Museum; the Nevada Museum of Art; Humboldt State University, Eureka, California; the Tijuana Biennial in Mexico; Snite Museum at Notre Dame University, Indiana; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, and The Oakland Museum of California. Her large-scale 5W public art project in San Francisco was awarded Best of the Bay by 7×7 Magazine in 2013. The Headlands Center for the Arts granted Fernández the Tournesol Award and her films have been screened at festivals internationally. In 2015, Humboldt State University published a catalogue of her solo exhibition at the First Street Gallery titled All or Nothing.

Mathers Museum of World Cultures

México Indígena is an exhibit of select works from the museum's permanent collection highlighting the artistic productions of indigenous peoples of Mexico.

Wells Library Scholars Commons. Jan. 7-31

Presented by IU Libraries, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the School of Global and International Studies

Photographed by the Hermanos Mayo. Curated by John Mraz.

This digital exhibit and book exhibit explores the experience of emigrating, as it was rendered by photographers who had also been uprooted. Today, as waves of migrations hurl themselves on the coasts and borders of the world, it seems appropriate to reflect on the Mexican braceros who were recruited between 1942-1964 to fill the boots of those US soldiers who had gone to fight fascism in the Second World War. We have chosen to tell this story through photographs made by other emigrants, Spanish refugees of the Civil War (1936-39), who bring the particular gaze of emigrants to this task. The exhibit will be complemented by books and objects from the library’s collections, related to Mexican immigration to the United States.

Presented by the Herman B Wells Library, this exhibit uses text and visuals—from newspapers clippings to data charts and maps—to provide key contextual information about Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends. Addressing the unaccompanied child migrants crisis of 2014, the book speaks to a timely issue in present-day American society.

On display in the Herman B Wells Library lobby.

Presented by the Herman B Wells Library, this exhibit introduces visitors to the work of Jaime Hernandez, co-creator of the acclaimed Love and Rockets comics series. Jaime’s contributions as writer and draftsman as well as the growing scholarly interest in his groundbreaking work are the central themes of the exhibit. A digital component feature family pictures and a video clip showing Jaime’s draftsmanship.

On display in the Herman B Wells Library Scholars’ Commons.