Always Crashing in the Same Car: Photographic Ruptures in New Mexico

You are invited to a talk from the Center for Latino and Latinex Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. We hope you can join us this Friday (11/21) at noon for an internal speaker series presentation by the CLALS Postdoctoral Felow, Alhelí Harvey.  She will present: "Always Crashing in the Same Car: Photographic Ruptures in New Mexico."   Please RSVP HERE.

The talk explores how New Mexico’s identity as the “Land of Enchantment” operates not just as a romantic slogan but as part of a larger settler-colonial project. “Enchantment” functions as an aesthetic, social, economic, and political tool that shapes narratives and sustains systems of dispossession. At the same time, Indigenous artists push back against these imposed visions. Focusing on midcentury photographs by Lee Marmon (Laguna), Dr. Harvey shows how scenes from Route 66 near Laguna Pueblo disrupt the polished image of “enchantment” and reveal Indigenous resistance to colonial fantasies.