Maria E. Cotera

“Nuestra Autohistoria” offers a multi-sited analysis of the knowledge praxis of Chicanas in the movement years. Based on nine years of archival research and oral history collection undertaken for Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Collective, this project is both an intellectual history of Chicana feminism in the 1970s and a genealogical examination of how Chicanas have made and continue to make knowledge, from their strategic uses of counter-memory, to their focus on collaborative resource-building. Focusing on the techniques of Chicana knowledge praxis rather than specific organizations, movements, or leaders, “Nuestra Autohistoria” offers a fresh perspective on how Chicanas deployed public history, new technology (mimeograph machines, slideshows, and early database technologies), and practices of critical collection and curation (bibliographies, anthologies, and early syllabi) to complicate movement scripts that all too often cast them to the margins of liberation projects.