Overview

United Fronteras (UF), locates and documents material / projects that expose / visualize the (dis) encounters of border regions in order to create cross-border cultural digital records and a digital memory of this production. A cross-border cultural digital record brings together material / projects with digital components produced in both countries to delineate border regions historically and by means of this record. In this way, a digital memory of active, inactive and developing material is created in order to document what can easily disappear or is distributed in other areas of study or cataloged under general categories. This is through different technological-digital modes and registers (metadata, exhibitions and maps) with the aim of (re) interpreting these regions from their own intersectionalities and to put in dialogue the different digital humanities perspectives that make up the cultural heritage, the territories- ecosystems and political issues of borders. This project is based on the theory and praxis of intersectionality, postcolonial digital humanities  and makes use of minimal computing as resistance tools to expose, intervene and interrupt in the digital cultural record of borders, built in a (neo) colonial way by showing the border from a single perspective that tends to be violent or negative. 

UF first phase (Mexico-United States borderlands) with its first group of (digital) humanists has learned minimal computing  practices and to work independently / autonomously, collaboratively and interdisciplinary. The knowledge and skills acquired on basic computing tools and the guidelines that govern the digital cultural record are shared with new generations and with local communities so that they can produce, preserve and have control of their digital initiatives. This in order to create greater awareness of the work that is carried out in the border regions, as well as to be part of the record with sustainable material, which provides resources and information from an approach that decolonizes the perception of division and exposes the border region in a postcolonial way.
 

Contributors

Carolina Alonso, Assistant Professor, Borders and Languages and Gender and Sexuality Studies, Fort Lewis College

Maira E. Álvarez, Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) Director, Houston Office, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Houston

Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, Public & DH Postdoc Research Fellow, Hall Center for the Humanities & Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Kansas

Laura Gonzales, Assistant Professor of Digital Writing and Cultural Rhetorics, University of Florida

Ivonne Ramírez, M.A. in Literature and gender Studies. Activist

Rubria Rocha de Luna, Ph.D. Candidate, Hispanic Studies Texas A&M University

Verónica Romero, Ph.D. Student, Hispanic Studies University of Houston

Annette M. Zapata, Ph.D. Candidate, Hispanic Studies, University of Houston