Fall 2016 seminar: B.A. candidate, government, Latin, and Latin American studies
Kimberly Cárdenas is a fourth-year undergraduate studying government, Latin, and Latin American studies. She is the daughter of Mexican migrants and grew up in La Puente, California. Cárdenas studied at Sciences Po, Paris, where she investigated issues of multiculturalism and nation in France. She is primarily interested in geographical terrains as sites of contestation and knowledge production that revolve around notions of race, gender, and sexuality — particularly with a focus on diasporic Latinos in the U.S. Cárdenas has worked in Chiapas, Mexico, alongside an indigenous women's rights collective, researching food insecurity and gender. She is currently working on a project launched this past summer in Tucson, on the racialization of Latino immigrant students from Mexico, while studying the historical trajectories of Mexican migrations to the U.S. As a Mellon Fellow, Cárdenas is interested in investigating the concept of Afro-Latinidad as it relates to space, and how race continues to inform the political transformation and foundation of Cuba.