Extending Mí Familia, Mí Historia: Humanities, the Arts, and Communities in Dialogue

Luis Alvarez
History
UC San Diego

Extending Mí Familia, Mí Historia advances the existing partnership between UC San Diego’s Institute of Arts and Humanities (IAH), The New Children’s Museum (NCM) in downtown San Diego, and Casa Familiar (Casa), a community organization on the U.S.-Mexico border. Under a NCM-led Cal Humanities grant, in 2017-2018 these institutions collaborated to provide humanities-based educational experiences for Latina/o families living near the border through community oral histories, art making workshops, and campus tours at Casa, NCM, and UC San Diego (Phase One). This project involves: 1) a public forum series of two events on border issues relevant to IAH, NCM, and Casa constituencies, one held on campus and another off; 2) follow-up visits to UC San Diego for NCM and Casa families and docents; 3) curricular support for community engagement-based student learning; and 4) digitization of oral history synopses and images of art making projects for a public facing website. Our aim is to bring the creativity and resources of IAH, NCM, and Casa to one another via humanities-based learning that bridges seemingly disparate institutions, puts communities in dialogue, and generates collectively produced knowledge.