The physical and digital cultural record of geopolitical borderlands has been formed in (neo)colonial ways where border regions and communities are perceived as divided. This implies a hierarchical understanding between nations and an erasure of the mutual histories and cultures that have emerged and continue to do so. Given the need to urgently intervene in the production of colonialism present in the cultural and digital record and its constant changes that deal with surveillance, control, and capitalism, in this presentation, I will talk about two interventions being underway in the initiative, United Fronteras. Through minimal computing principles and postcolonial digital humanities practices, a transborder digital cultural record and the digital memory of the Mexico-United States borderlands are being built and theorized to intervene and challenge the democratized digital knowledge of these areas. This will allow the (re)interpretation of these regions through their own intersectionalities, opportunities to establish counter-knowledge, and the creation of new models of social justice changes led by communal and collaborative praxis.  

Sylvia Fernández is the Public & Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Research Fellow with The Hall Center for the Humanities and the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities (IDRH) at the University of Kansas. Her research interests lie at the intersections of US Latinx-Northern Mexico literature, cultures, and languages, Border Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexualities Studies, and Digital Humanities.