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Social Sciences Division
Latin American & Latino Studies
Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow
Staff
Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas
Postdoctoral Scholar
Crown College Faculty Wing
Merrill/Crown Faculty Services
Dr. Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz's work centers on non-custodial archival practices, Latinx/é digital humanities, and community-engaged memory work. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University, where her dissertation examined the intersections of archival theory, feminist praxis, and Latinx/é cultural production. Her academic training is complemented by extensive experience in film programming and cultural curation, including work with organizations such as the Watsonville Film Festival, the Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles, the Vincent Price Art Museum, and MIX NYC. She has also supported community memory projects through ImaginX en Movimiento (IXeM), collaborating with grassroots organizations such as the Garífuna Museum of Los Angeles and academic institutions including the Institute of Digital Arts and Humanities at Indiana University, Bloomington. Prior to her doctoral work, she earned an M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University and a B.A. in Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Across her education and professional training, Dr. Hicks-Alcaraz has developed a deeply transdisciplinary practice that bridges critical theory, hands-on audiovisual preservation, and relational, community-centered research.
Dr. Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz’s expertise spans digital humanities, archival theory, and community-engaged cultural preservation. She is recognized for advancing non-custodial approaches to audiovisual preservation that unsettle conventional archival models by centering relational accountability, creator agency, and embodied knowledge. Her public and digital humanities work, including the Muxerista Media Recovery Project and the Memory Arts Lab at the Urbana Makerspace, develops participatory, arts-based frameworks for sustaining cultural memory beyond institutional ownership. Grounded in feminist, queer, anticolonial, Indigenous, and Latinx relational theories, her research reimagines archives as infrastructures of care rather than static repositories. Dr. Hicks-Alcaraz has presented her work at national and international conferences and published on media, memory, and archival justice. Through sustained collaborations with community partners, she foregrounds marginalized media histories via screenings, digital platforms, and experimental archival practices, contributing to broader debates on power, memory, and technology in cultural production.
Topics:
Non-custodial and community-based archives; Latina feminist media histories; muxerista media practice; audiovisual preservation; Latinx/é home movies; cultural memory; archival infrastructure.
Methodologies:
Community-engaged and participatory research; practice-based scholarship; testimonio and pláticas; feminist and queer relational theories; arts-based methods; autoethnography; Latina feminist archival praxis.
Fields:
Digital Humanities; Information Studies; Archival Studies; Film and Media Studies; Feminist and Gender Studies; Latinx/é Studies; Cultural Studies; Public Humanities.
Selected
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Latin American and Latino Studies 2025-2027, UC Santa Cruz
Urbana Arts Council Grant, 2025
The US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) Grants-in-Aid Program, University of Houston, 2023-2024
Digital Humanities Fellowship, Claremont Colleges, 2019-2020
Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant, SSRC-Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, 2017/2018/2020
The Marian and Charles Holmes Performing Arts Fund, Claremont Colleges, 2019
Pre-doctoral Research Dissertation Grant, SSRC-Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, 2019
Friedman Award, Claremont Graduate University School of Arts & Humanities, 2018/2019
Outstanding Faculty Award, Cal Poly Pomona Intercollegiate Athletics, 2018
The National Society of Leadership and Success, Claremont Graduate University, 2017
Film Curation and Programming
Co-Curator, “Within There Runs Blood,” MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives (curated with Eve Oishi), 2019
Director of Programming, Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles, 2016-2019
Guest Curator, Horror Film Category, Watsonville Film Festival, 2016-2018
Guest Curator, “The Exiles,” Vincent Price Art Museum, 2018
Intern Curator, The Markaz Cultural Center for the Greater Middle East, 2015
Co-Curator, “Orphans at MoMA: An Amateur Cinema League of Nations,” New York Museum of Modern Art (curated with Dan Streible), 2014
Curator, “Social Criticism and Cannibalism in Jorge Michel Grau's Somos lo que hay (We Are What We Are),” New York University, 2014
Conferences
Panelist, “Ancestors Guide Us: Latinx Scholars Practicing Decolonial and Indigenous Research Methodologies in Their Own Communities.” Latina/o Studies Association. 26-29 March 2026. Austin, TX. (forthcoming)
Chair/Roundtable Panelist, “Altars, Archives, and A/V Futures: A Plática on U.S.-based Latinx/é Media Preservation and Cultural Memory Practices.” Association of Moving Image Archivists.” 3-5 December2025. Baltimore, MD.
Panelist, “Peliculas Caseras: Fostering Archival Autonomy and Empowerment Among Latine Communities.” Association of Moving Image Archivists. 4-6 December, 2024. Milwuakee, WI.
Panelist, “Latina Film Recovery Project and TimelineJS.” XVII Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Conference: The Right to Write, Speak and Be in Times of Banning, Censorship and Persecution. 25-27 April 2024. Houston, TX.
Panelist, “Feminist Media Histories: Curating Archives.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference. 14-18 March 2024. Boston, MA.
Roundtable Panelist, “The Joy of Representation in Digital Humanities and Archives.” Modern Language Association Convention. 4-7 January 2024. Philadelphia, PA.
Journal Articles + Book Chapters
“The Archive is Not a Container: Latinx DH, Rasquache Movidas, and the Case for Non-Custodial Memory Work,” Debates in US Latinx DH, eds. Gabriela Baeza Ventura, María E. Cotera, Annemarie Perez, Carolina Villarroel, University of Minnesota, (in-review, 2026).
“Home Movie Remezcla: ‘Doing Good Relationships’ as an Approach Toward Archival Healing,” Feminist Media Histories: Curating Film Archives, vol. 10, no. 2, Spring 2024, pp. 34-60.
“Piloting the Counter-Memorias Digital Testimonio Project: Blackness in U.S. Latinx and Latin American Racial Politics.” The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 6, no. 4, 2023, 99-119.
Hicks-Alcaraz, Marisa and Jon Heggestad.“‘Aimlessly Playing Around’: Queer Affordances in Graduate Student DH Projects.” Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities 3, no. 1, 2023.
Hicks-Alcaraz, Marisa and Eve Oishi. “Negotiating Political Identities in Community-Based Film Festivals: Reflexive Perspectives from Curator/Scholars/Activists.” Feminist Media Histories: Activism, 5, no. 4, 2019, 21-55.
DH Project Review
“Review: Chicana Diasporic.” Review of Chicana Diasporic: A Nomadic Journey of the Activist Exiled by Linda Garcia Merchant. Reviews in Digital Humanities, I(12), 14 December 2020.
Digital + Public Humanities Projects
Mujerista Media Recovery Project (2023-Present), Director
A digital humanities initiative that recovers, documents, and expands access to independent U.S.-based Latina media histories from the 20th and early 21st centuries through an open-access database and research platform. Our timeline offers career profiles of pioneering Latina mediamakers of the 20th century. Additional public resources created to advance scholarship on Latina mediamaking include a growing mediography and bibliography.
Memory Arts Lab in the Urbana Makerspace (2024-Present), Founder and Workshop Facilitator
A free community space that provides tools, workshops, and resources to support communities in creatively preserving and sharing their histories using Do-It-Yourself/Together approaches rooted in cultural preservation and storytelling.
ImaginX en Movimiento (IXeM) Memory Collective (2019-2022), Co-founder
A collective that focused on developing anticolonial research practices with artists, archivists, and cultural workers to enhance audiovisual preservation access for BIPPOC (Black, Indigenous, Palestinian, and People of Color) communities.
Home Movie Remezcla (2022-2023), Founder
A project that blends home videos from the Latinx diaspora with original testimonios to highlight the transformative power of storytelling and self-representation as tools of resistance, healing, and reclaiming narratives against marginalization, oppression, and historical erasure.
The Counter-Memorias Testimonios Project (Prototype) (2021-2023), Founder
A prototype for online archive of video-recorded testimonios and cultural resources that center the various experiences of women and femmes of Southern California’s Latin American and Caribbean diasporas.
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