Arizona Humanities believes that Representation Matters
Watch past Representation Matters talks
Community, Creativity, & Comics
Join us for an exciting online event exploring the powerful intersection of community, creativity, and comics! This virtual gathering features two incredible artists, Lawrence Lindell and Breena Nunez, who will share their experiences and insights into how comics can amplify voices, foster connection, and spark social change. Get inspired by Lawrence and Breena’s journey, learn about their creative processes, and discover how comics can create space for underrepresented communities to tell their own stories.
Atascosa Borderlands: Visual Storytelling along the Arizona-Sonora Border
Along the US-Mexico border lies a remote expanse of the Coronado National Forest in Southern Arizona known as the Atascosa Highlands. An important biological and cultural corridor between Mexico and the United States, the Atascosas take up less than 1% of Arizona’s overall landmass, but host one-quarter of the state’s flora, including species which are found nowhere else in the United States. While conducting an ecological flora and photographic survey, documentary photographer Luke Swenson and naturalist and writer Jack Dash, observed firsthand the complex cultural, historical, and ecological significance of this notoriously rugged landscape. They examined the region’s use as a migratory and smuggling route, and witnessed recent border wall construction and ongoing environmental and social disruptions in the area. The ecological survey and their observations inspired them to create Atascosa Borderlands, a community-based visual storytelling project combining original film photography, recorded oral history interviews, a botanical collection, and digital archive of historical photographs from community members, State and National archives. This interactive session will explore the nuanced realities of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands, the voices of cattle ranchers, ecologists, humanitarian aid workers, migrants, militia members, coues deer hunters, ex-border patrol agents, and indigenous community members.
Funding for Representation Matters has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture initiative.
Representation Matters has also been supported through funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the A More Perfect Union Initiative and through funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Why It Matters: Civic and Electoral Participation.