Assistant Professor of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona
About
Dr. Michelle Téllez teaches at the University of Arizona and has a long history of grassroots community engagement and activism in multiple social justice projects that draw on critical pedagogy, principles of sustainability, community-based arts, performance, and visual media. Her scholarly work focuses on identity, mothering, transnational community formation, cross-border labor organizing, gendered migration, and autonomy and resistance along the US/Mexico border.
Dr. Téllez is a founding member of the Chicana M(other)work Collective and the Binational Artist in Residency project. She is on the editorial review board for Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, on the executive board of directors for the Southwest Folklife Alliance and is the Faculty Fellow for the Guerrero Student Center. Dr. Téllez is widely published in scholarly books and journals like Gender & Society, Feminist Formations, Aztlán, Chicana/Latina Studies, and Violence Against Women. Her public scholarship includes writing for Truth Out, The Feminist Wire, Latino Rebels and Mujeres Talk.
Current Work:
Dr. Tellez' most recent project is the co-edited Chicana M(other)work Anthology published by the University of Arizona Press. This text weaves together emerging scholarship and testimonios by and about self-identified Chicana and women of color mother-scholars, activists, and allies who center mothering as transformative labor through an intersectional lens. Contributors provide narratives that make feminized labor visible and that prioritizes collective action and holistic healing for mother-scholars of color, their children, and their communities within and outside academia.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Border studies, Chicana studies, migration, social movements