Sierra Mendez

Cover image for this page created by Kimberly Juarez.

This past spring, the students in my Latinx Short Story class this semester chose to create an open-educational resource for literary terms that would also reference and celebrate Latinx Literature. Even though the semester is over, we are still working on this website. It should be complete in July 2023: https://sites.utexas.edu/literary-analysis-latinx-guide/

Texas Historical Markers are invested in settler colonial narratives that privilege White settler experience and erase or vilify the presence of other communities, particularly native ones. For their final, I ask my Rhetoric of Texas students to choose a Texas Historical Marker, research its historical context, and revise it. They then write a succinct brief describing their thinking: what in the original marker excluded particular publics and particular histories; the decisions they made to change it; and what they believe their version of the marker does differently.

You can check out student work here.

This class is for students interested in the persuasive power of visual forms of communication from typefaces to body language to photographs to stage props. This semester, we will think critically about visual texts that produce and move the 2020 Presidential Election. Alongside writing assignments, students will design and create political media in ways that help them explore affective, image-based argumentation and messaging. Course papers are intended to nurture student ability to write professionally and thoughtfully about rhetorical sights and situations. Course graphic projects are designed to develop student understanding of rhetorical decision-making embedded in creative composition, production, and circulation of images. Ultimately, this course aims to cultivate students’ perceptions of themselves as makers of political meaning via images they produce in this class and in their daily lives.

Students will be asked to choose not a political candidate but a political issue to follow throughout the course of the semester and examine its rhetorical treatment by citizens, organizations, political parties, and presidential candidates. Throughout the semester, students will trace shifts in what their chosen issue “looks like” and complete major assignments in accordance with their topic.

Unit 1 will focus on analyzing and producing written text as a thing not only read but seen , which will include macro-level discussions about pieces like campaign and party logos, news article structures, and voter ballot design and also micro-level discussions about how punctuation, letter kerning, and hashtags in tweets and bot posts are all part of non-verbal persuasion. The second unit will focus on analyzing and producing graphic texts such as photographs, portraits, posters, ads, and memes while making connections across clothing and ethos, white space and audience, color and genre, gesture and medium, etc. In this unit, the bodies of candidates and of voters are considered as sights. The third unit will focus on the “putting together” and curation of multiple visuals in texts such as television campaign ads or poster/banner series to explore their message and purpose as a collection.

STUDENT WORK FEATURED LEFT.

In 2018, the San Antonio Public Library asked if I would make an installation for the portal as a freelance designer to celebrate the city’s tricentennial. I gathered images from the library’s archives, the Institute of Texan Cultures, and local photographer Michael Cirlos for use in this project. My goal (that I don’t really think I achieved) was to address settlement and immigration and the complex networks that pushed bodies into specific socio-economic roles upon their arrival. I tried to present a non-linear narrative that gathered the different experiences of different bodies and pressed them into the same space—a kind of cacophony. Visually, the piece carries the “Pan-American Confluence” grand narrative that San Antonio likes to tell about itself. Its captions, however, tell subaltern narratives to challenge that story.

The Digital Field Methods Institute hosted its first session in Summer 2018 at the Digital Writing & Research Lab under the direction of Casey Boyle and Will Burdette and a team of graduate students. I assisted in the coordination of DFMI behind-the-scenes. I led workshops and field outings during its facilitation. I also designed the logo and other marketing materials/memorabilia.

Controversies was originally written for use in “RHE 306: Introduction to Rhetoric & Writing” courses at the University of Texas at Austin. Grounded in practical application for modern public discourse, the book offers foundational lessons in research, analysis, and argumentation to help students develop college-level writing and critical thinking skills. The text also includes for instructors extended explanation of key rhetorical concepts and recommendations for classroom exercises, discussions, and assignments.

[AUTHOR] Mark Garrett Longaker

[EDITORS & DEVELOPERS, DIGITAL EDITION] Sierra Mendez and Andrew Heermans

[EDITORS, PRINT EDITION] Ashley Miller, Andrew Rechnitz, Michael Neibergail, Suzanne Bachelor, and Aaron Zacks

Controversies can be accessed here.

In 2015, Candelaria Mendoza and I applied for and received a $3000 “Latino Americans: 500 Years of History” Community Programming Grant from the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities. With these funds, we organized a series of events and installations including community storytelling, film and poster series, and panels with local artists and historians.

This is a project I completed for Casey Boyle’s “Digital Field Methods” class. For a semester, I kept a record of every piece of trash my daughter and I produced. I then used Adobe Muse (software now unfortunately unavailable) to curate an interactive seminar paper on the making of trash - an industry of packaging and marketing in which billions upon billions of dollars are invested by producers and consumers annually.

While at UT, I worked as an Assistant Director for the Digital Writing & Research Lab, providing access and resources for humanities instructors, scholars, and students implementing innovative technologies in their classroom and research. I helped initiate the Digital Field Methods Institute under Dr. Casey Boyle. In this position, I created a wide variety of educational resources including lesson plans, classroom workshops, staff training workshops, video tutorials, and communication materials for various lab events. I also designed the lab’s website.

In 2015, I helped Mission Branch Library transcribe and make available online oral histories gathered by their community. I then helped them put together two curated displays—one at Mission Branch Library and the other (smaller) at the Kampmann Library Portal. Both exhibitions spotlighted indigenous communities of San Antonio and Bexar County. Both exhibitions featured artifacts loaned by library patrons whose families have lived in this place since before the missions. For these exhibits, I designed intricate wall-wrap backgrounds that imitated the colorful patterns painted onto Mission walls by the Payaya. These wall wraps held titled QR codes that would link patrons to the corresponding oral history online. You can listen to these oral histories here.

In 2015, I was asked to design the new installation for the Kampmann Library Portal that was to correspond with the Briscoe Museum’s Buffalo Soldiers event. I chose pieces and images from the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures for this exhibit and also from the personal collection of Colonial John Mitchum. It was important to me to not just “celebrate” the Buffalo Soldier, but to tell his story: that, following the Civil War, White communities in both Union and Confederate territory objected to the presence of armed Black soldiers who had fought for the Union; that the U.S. government then sent these men West with promises of citizenship and respect to remove indigenous tribes; that the Buffalo Soldier was often a target of violence for the White settler communities he was sent to protect; and that he forged the frontier, including trails through the deserts of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona and through the Rockies, with paltry pay and meager supplies from the U.S. government.

The Buffalo Soldiers Association, following the museum’s event, asked for a copy of the files for my exhibit so they could print and display their own version. The exhibit was also recognized by the State of Texas by José Menendez, State Senator, District 26.

If you’re interested in learning about this topic, I highly recommend: Voices of the Buffalo Soldier: Records, Reports, and Recollections of Military Life and Service in the West by Frank N. Schubert; Buffalo Soldiers: The Colored Regulars in the United States Army by T. G. Steward; Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army by John P. Langellier

For a year with Veronica Rodriguez and two years on my own, I managed the San Antonio Public Library’s small space at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in downtown San Antonio. (It’s a long story.) This space was dedicated to public-facing humanities projects: educational events, installations, resources, meetings, panels, and more. Most subject matter focused on San Antonio or Texas memory and history such as the history of the 1921 flood, influential local women, the 1930s labor movement, and local indigenous histories. In this space, I used materials from the library’s archives to curate multimedia stories and exhibits for public audiences. I also ran a children’s storytime, a writing group, and co-led a book club with Briscoe staff.

https://www.briscoemuseum.org/san-antonio-public-library-portal/