Coming to the Heartland

University of Kansas
  • Marta Caminero-Santangelo, Professor of English, University of Kansas
  • Elizabeth MacGonagle, Associate Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, University of Kansas

Project Description

Focusing on the diversity, adversity, and struggles of Latin American and African immigrants in the Heartland, this initiative asks how the new digital age affects the stories that immigrants tell, as well as the possibilities for their visibility in the wider community. The project positions past and recent immigrant stories in trans-generational conversation with one another through multimedia and multi-modal vignettes, constructed via the storytelling methods unique and best suited to each generation.

Image Credit

Art courtesy Tanya Hartman: Icons From a Broken World: Atem Akuei, Rebecca Kothis Kuany Mabior

Partner Details

  • Marta Caminero-Santangelo

    Professor of English, University of Kansas

    Bio

    Marta Caminero-Santangelo is the Director of the KU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the author of Documenting the Undocumented: Latina/o Narrative and Social Justice in the Era of Operation Gatekeeper and On Latinidad: US Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Her current research examines literature representing Latino/a/x immigration in the Midwest, and she is collaborating with Elizabeth MacGonagle on the “Coming to the Heartland” project which documents African and Latinx immigrant experiences in Kansas.

  • Elizabeth MacGonagle

    Associate Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, University of Kansas

    Bio

    Elizabeth MacGonagle is an African historian in the Departments of History and African & African American Studies. As Director of the Kansas African Studies Center from 2013-2021, she led a Migration Stories initiative to gather and promote the stories of recent African migrants in the Midwest. She is currently collaborating with Marta Caminero, Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at KU, to document African and Latinx experiences of immigration in the Heartland.