The United States has been struggling with the definition of voting rights ever since its founding, and the right to vote continues to be of crucial importance in 2020. This is an important voting year for several reasons. It not only marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, but it also celebrates the 200th birthday of Susan B. Anthony, who was an influential activist in the woman’s suffrage movement.
Poet José Olivarez, author of Citizen Illegal, was scheduled to visit El Paso Community College for The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP planned Humanities Week at the end of April 2020. Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic forced cancellations and postponements of all Humanities Week events.
In June 1934, the El Paso Herald ran an advertisement from a local real estate agency that claimed “The Ideal Spot to Living is the Valley, in Rosedale Farms,”1 a confident statement for a virtually unknown land company describing a desolate and underdeveloped part of the city. Similar advertisements ran in the Herald for the next few years shaping Rosedale Farms as ranch living near the city.2 The advertisements became bolder as the company touted that residents could own their own orchards, vineyards, and gardens and raise their own chickens and “keep a cow!” Not having to pay city taxes while enjoying the best of urban and rural life was a lure the company used to attract residents to the area.3
Every semester, in the first few weeks of class, I dedicate one class period to discussing with my students the process of doing and writing history. During this session, we discuss the different kinds of evidence historians look at to craft narratives of the past
“Couldn’t you find interest in a more practical field such as engineering or medicine?” My cousin was faced with this question after recently sharing with his parents that he wanted to major in sociology. This is a reality that students encounter and that can be discouraging and dispiriting to their career goals. In our Hispanic communities, choosing to major in the humanities is received with a certain degree of apprehension.