Marla Ramírez wins Article Award from the Oral History Association

Marla Ramírez’s essay “Gendered Banishment: Rewriting Mexican Repatriation through a Transgenerational Oral History Methodology”  has won the Article Award from the Oral History Association, the principal membership organization for people committed to the value of oral history in the United States.  Published in 2022, the article is part of a special issue of the journal Latino Studies featuring several contributions by researchers affiliated with the UW-Madison Chican@ & Latin@ Studies Program.  It examines the lasting effects of the banishment of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent during the so-called repatriation campaigns of the 1930s, drawing both on interviews with individuals and larger intergenerational focus groups.   Although this use of focus groups is rare among oral historians, the Association notes that Dr. Ramírez’s work “demonstrates the value in adopting this approach,” offering “a model of feminist oral history methodology” and “a model for building an archive.” The Association will present Dr. Ramírez with the award at its annual meeting in Baltimore, October 18-21.