Vanessa Fonseca
Biography
Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez is an Associate Professor of English and an Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. She brings to her Associate Dean position many years of experience working with communities of color in research, teaching, and service engagements. She served as the President for the ASU Faculty Women of Color Caucus (FWOCC) in 2020-2021, Membership Coordinator for Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) since 2015, and the Rocky Mountain Foco Representative for the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) from 2015-2017
Fonseca-Chávez's research focuses on the contentions and legacies of colonialism in the southwest United States and how Chicanx and Indigenous communities navigate and contest violence and power in literary and cultural production. Her book, Colonial Legacies in Chicana/o Literature and Culture: Looking through the Kaleidoscope was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2020. Another important area of research for Fonseca-Chávez is understanding how rural communities in the southwest United States narrate a sense of belonging through economic migrations. She is currently working on a project funded by the Whiting Foundation that centers the stories of Hispano residents of eastern Arizona and how they understand and communicate their querencia - a word that invokes a desire (querer) to embody one's individual and communal heritage/inheritance (herencia). In 2020, she co-edited Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico Homeland (University of New Mexico Press) with Levi Romero and Spencer R. Herrera. Querencia was named a finalist for an International Latino Book Award.
At ASU, Fonseca-Chávez teaches courses on film in the American Southwest, Indigenous literature, Chicana/o literature, and American ethnic literature. She is a core faculty member of the M.A. in Narrative Studies program where she teaches courses on Conquest Narratives, Writing the Southwest, and Narrating the Archives. She also is an affiliate faculty member of the School of Transborder Studies, the School of International Letters and Cultures and the Department of English at ASU Tempe.
Fonseca-Chávez co-directs the Following the Manito Trail project, which looks at the Hispanic New Mexican, or Manito, diaspora from the mid 19th century to the present. The Following the Manito Trail team is collaborating on a gallery exhibit scheduled to open in March 2022 at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico.
Education
- Ph.D. Spanish Cultural Studies, Arizona State University
- M.A. Hispanic Southwest Studies, University of New Mexico
- B.A. Spanish; minor: Business Management, University of New Mexico
Videos
Research Interests
Fonseca-Ch�vez'a research interests include Chicana/o literature, Nuevomexicana/o literature, oral history and storytelling. Her most recent works examine the complex intertanglings of colonial structures in the Southwest United States and how coloniality of power manifests in literature, cultural production, and social spaces. In addition to this work, she is interested in how rural communities narrate their sense of place and belonging.
Publications
BOOKS
Fonseca-Chávez, Vanessa. Colonial Legacies in Chicana/o Literature: Looking through the Kaleidoscope. University of Arizona Press, 2020.
Fonseca, Chávez, Vanessa, et. al. Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico Homeland. University of New Mexico Press, 2020.
Rosales, Jesús and Vanessa Fonseca. Spanish Perspectives on Chicano Literature: Literary and Cultural Essays. The Ohio State University Press, 2017.
PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES
Fonseca, Vanessa. "'Donde mi amor se ha quedado:' Narratives of Sheepherding and Querencia along the Wyoming Manito Trail." Annals of Wyoming, vol. 89, no. 2/3, 2017, p. 6-12.
Fonseca, Vanessa. "El tercer espacio y el mestizaje en el método poscolonial para la liberación del pueblo chicano en Los muertos también cuentan (1995) de Miguel Méndez." Revista de la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española. 9: (2016) 235-247.
Henkel Scott and Vanessa Fonseca. "Fearless Speech and the Discourse of Civility in Salt of the Earth." Chiricú. 1.1: (Fall 2016) 19-38.
Chang, Aurora., V. Fonseca, L.Soto, & D. Cardona. "Writing for Publication: Latina Faculty/Staff of Color Testimonios on Scholarship Production." Chicana/Latina Studies. 15.2 (Spring 2016) 125-149.
Fonseca, Vanessa. El espacio de la Libertad y la heróe chicana en González and Daughter Trucking Co. de María Amparo Escandón." Puentes. 8: (Spring 2011) 80-90.
BOOK CHAPTERS
Fonseca-Chávez, Vanessa. "We Were Always Chicanos: Situated Citizenship in the Equality State." Histories and Cultures of Latinas: Suffrage, Activism and Women's Rights, edited by Montse Feu and Yolanda Padilla. Accepted.
Martínez, Trisha and Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez. "Finding and Building Community on the Manito Trail." Western Lands, Western Voices: History at Work in the American West, edited by Gregory E. Smoak. University of Utah Press. Forthcoming.
Fonseca-Chávez, Vanessa. "Contested Querencia in The Last Conquistador (2007) by John J. Valadez and Cristina Ibarra. Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico Homeland, edited by Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, Levi Romero, and Spencer R. Herrera. 79-97. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020.
Brown, Kevin, Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, Tey Marianna Nunn, Irene Vásquez, and Myla Vicenti Carpio. "Critical Reflections on Chicanx and Indigenous Scholarship and Activism." Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico Homeland, edited by Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, Levi Romero, and Spencer R. Herrera. 54-73. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020.
Fonseca, Vanessa. "Images, Identities, and Realities in Romance of a Little Village Girl (1955) by Cleofas Jaramillo and Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (1955) by Norma Cantú." Word Images: A Norma Elía Cantú Reader. Ed. Gabriela Gutiérrez y Muhs. University of Arizona Press. Forthcoming.
Fonseca, Vanessa. "La intersección de la vida política y literaria en la novelas Al filo del agua (1947) y Las vueltas del tiempo (1973) de Agustín Yañéz." Bold Heroes and Noble Bandidas. Ed. Gary Keller. Bilingual Review Press. Forthcoming.
Fonseca, Vanessa. "El legado cultural nuevomexicano en los pueblos abandonados: los cuentos del valle del Río Puerco y Atarque, NM en Recuerdos de los viejitos: Tales from the Río Puerco (1987) por Nasario García y Atarque: Now All is Silent (2007) por Pauline Chávez-Bent." Crossing the Borders of Imagination. Ed. María del Mar Ramón Torrijos. Instituto Franklin, 2014. 203-216.
Fonseca, Vanessa. "Rosaura Sánchez, crítica marxista y máxima expresión del La Jolla Circle: sus contribuciones a la crítica chicana, la sociolingüística y la recuperación de la obra decimonónica de María Amparo Ruiz de Burton." Chican@s y mexican@s norteñ@s: Bi-Borderlands Dialogues on Literary and Cultural Production. Eds. Graciela Silva-Rodríguez and Manuel de Jesús Hernández-G., México D.F: Ediciones Eón, 2012. 73-110.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS AND CREATIVE ACTIVITY
Fonseca-Chávez, Vanessa, Scott Henkel, and Mary Katherine Scott. "The Materiality of Land in Salt of the Earth." The Routledge Handbook of American Material Culture, edited by Kristin Haus. Forthcoming.
Fonseca-Chávez, Vanessa. "Rosaura Revueltas y su compromiso social." Puentes: Revista méxico-chicana de literatura, cultura, y arte. Accepted.
Fonseca-Chávez, Vanessa. "Reflections on Reconstructing a Chicana/o Literary Heritage: Hispanic Colonial Literature of the Southwest," edited by María Herrera-Sobek. University of Arizona Press, Open Arizona. 2020.
Fonseca-Chávez, Vanessa. "New Mexico Newspapers." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latino Literature. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Research Activity
Following the Manito Trail Co-Director, 2015-present.
Following the Manito Trail is an interdisciplinary project that seeks to document the histories and stories of the Hispanic New Mexican, or Manito, diaspora from the mid 1800's to the present. You can learn more about the Following the Manito Trail project HERE.
Courses
| Spring 2022 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 334 | Am Southwest Literature & Film |
| Fall 2021 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 359 | Indigenous American Literature |
| ENG 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ENG 590 | Reading and Conference |
| ENG 597 | Graduate Capstone Seminar |
| Spring 2021 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 334 | Am Southwest Literature & Film |
| ENG 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ENG 498 | Pro-Seminar |
| ENG 597 | Graduate Capstone Seminar |
| ENG 598 | Special Topics |
| Fall 2020 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 359 | Indigenous American Literature |
| ENG 363 | Transborder Chicano Literature |
| ENG 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ENG 590 | Reading and Conference |
| ENG 597 | Graduate Capstone Seminar |
| Spring 2020 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 498 | Pro-Seminar |
| ENG 521 | Writing the Southwest |
| ENG 590 | Reading and Conference |
| Fall 2019 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 359 | Indigenous American Literature |
| ENG 363 | Transborder Chicano Literature |
| ENG 590 | Reading and Conference |
| Spring 2019 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 334 | Am Southwest Literature & Film |
| ENG 494 | Special Topics |
| ENG 522 | Narratives of Conquest |
| Fall 2018 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 359 | Indigenous American Literature |
| ENG 363 | Transborder Chicano Literature |
| Fall 2017 | |
|---|---|
| Course Number | Course Title |
| ENG 359 | Indigenous American Literature |
| ENG 363 | Transborder Chicano Literature |