FOR XICANA[X] INDIGENOUS THOUGHT, ART AND SOCIAL PRAXIS
An Engaged Public Research Institute
in the Division of Humanities & Fine Arts
and the Division of Social Sciences
University of California, Santa Barbara
Las Maestras Center recognizes and honors the Coastal Chumash people, the traditional custodians of Anisq’oyo, the land where at UCSB we teach, work and make home. We say: “It is a privilege to come to know you and we thank you for your daily example of wise stewardship. We acknowledge your living elders and those who have walked this earth before you. May our relationship grow together in shared purpose and vision."
La Visión
Las Maestras Center’s multi-disciplinary programming blends visual, performance and literary arts to inform an aesthetic and a directed intention in the creative process, which return artists to their home cultures and contemporary communities of common cause.
HFA Dean Berry: “YOUR VOICES HAVE BEEN HEARD”
Las Maestras Center to stay open!
Supporters rejoice during protest.
See Daily Nexus News.
Las Maestras Center
(Re)braiding a Future
From Dean Daina Ramey Berry:
“To the extent allowed, my own position as HFA Dean, I can ensure that LMC doors will remain open. From today forward we will continue to work collaboratively to imagine what a future LMC looks like”. . . Las Maestras Center was founded with a powerful vision: to create space for Xicana/x Indigenous thought, art, social praxis, mentorship, cultural work, and community-engaged scholarship. . . .We want to acknowledge that legacy and affirm the importance of the work associated with the center’s founding mission.”
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From Maestras Cherríe Moraga and Celia Herrera-Rodríguez:
“We recognize that LMC as we know it – its world view and the bodies that have inhabited the space—have changed with the times and ideally will continue to do so moving forward. This Center for “Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought Art and Social Praxis” was our research project, which we were privileged to share with our students and community. . . To have had such support toward the realization of the vision of Las Maestras Center on a university campus is phenomenal in its own right.”
Featured: LMC Digital archive
This breathing archive documents our personal and political histories . . .
This digital collection is a working archive of projects, events and curated spaces that Las Maestras Center has put together since our conception in 2017-18. Although only officially established at UCSB a few short years ago, this digital archive is testimony to and spans the work done before our official opening and the work we have yet to do. It is a living space in time where we welcome all to engage with the bodies of art, words and politica.
