(In)between nation and diaspora: Performing Indigenous and African legacies in Chicana/o and Mexican cultural production

This dissertation interrogates methodologies that contemporary Chicana/o and Mexican artists employ in embodying and representing pre-Columbian Indigenous and African diasporic histories and iconographies. Engaging with cultural production ranging from visual art and dramatic texts to folkloric music and performance art, I assert that as these artists "remap" the Americas they reconfigure notions of national identities and re-envision diasporic imaginaries. I focus on these performative reformulations through the work of: Chicana playwright and essayist Cherrie Moraga; Chicana writer and performer Adelina Anthony; Chicana/Tepehuana painter, installation and performance artist Celia Herrera Rodriguez; Mexican actress and performance artist, Jesusa Rodriguez; Mexican son jarocho group Son de Madera; predominately Chicana/o band Quetzal; Chicana muralist and painter Juana Alicia; and Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldua. Focusing on questions of race, gender, sexuality and class, I argue that the artists discussed challenge canonical and hegemonic constructions of nation and diaspora and make interventions that alter the very trajectories of critical and popular discourse.