DAY ONE, Fall Semester, 2019

I start my U.S. History class by playing Liam Lynch’s “United States of Whatever” and explain that each class after today will begin with music. I do this because it is the closest I can come to being a rock star and because I believe that meaningful connections can be made between seemingly unrelated things.

As mentioned in our previous weblog entry our project is about the magnificent, magical, mysterious creatures we all know, whether we read about them or dream about —them—dragons.

When asked to devote my time to the McNeely book collection at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Library’s Special Collections Department, I felt an initial sense of joy which quickly turned into anguish. Comprising around 1400 volumes, the McNeely Collection harbors a pretty extensive corpus of Latin American books written mostly in Spanish.

It's one thing to say that the humanities touch every aspect of our lives.  It's quite another to actually be acutely aware of it, especially when taking part in public humanities events and multiple media.

My short time as an Undergraduate Research Fellow for The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP has already taught me so much about research, and specifically about zoot suits in El Paso. I am currently working on a project with Dr. Melissa Esmacher, an Associate Professor of History at El Paso Community College. The project involves researching a riot, or near-riot, that happened in downtown El Paso on June 19, 1943.