Michelle Téllez and Mike Chávez engage in conversation on topics related to the Xican-a.o.x. Body exhibition. Dr. Chávez wrote the essay “Los de Abajo: Lowriders, Bodies, and Rasquachismo” that is included in the exhibition catalog. He is the co-executive director and founder of the Inland Empire Labor Institute and a professor of sociology at Riverside City College. Dr. Téllez is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in Community Studies, Sociology, Chicana/o Studies and Education who writes about identity, mothering, transnational community formation, cross-border labor organizing, gendered migration, autonomy and resistance along the U.S./Mexico border.

Mike Chávez is a father, partner, and an activist who was born and raised in the Inland Empire. He has been a teacher in higher education for the last 20 years where he has taught classes in Chicanx/Latinx Studies, Gender Studies, Labor Studies, and Sociology. He earned his bachelor’s in Psychology and Ethnic Studies and a PhD in Sociology, all from the University of California, Riverside. However, he began his academic career as a student at Riverside City College, the school where he is now a sociology professor. He was recently elected as the next president of the California Sociological Association. 

Michelle Téllez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona. She is the author of “Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect” (2021), winner of the 2023 National Association of Chicana/o Studies Book of the Year Award. She co-founded the Chicana M(other)work Collective, the Arizona Binational Artist in Residency Project and is co-director of the Memorias en Movimiento Exhibit now showing at the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego.

Event has reached RSVP capacity. There will be limited access available at the door.

This Plática will take place at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in the Cheech Auditorium (located on the second floor)