Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences - Paperback

by Elena Foulis (Author)

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.

Author Biography

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.