Colloquium Series: Nancy Plankey-Videla & Mark Mallory 2/3/26
"Return to the United States or Stay in Mexico? Understanding Post-return Trajectories of Deported and Coerced Returned Persons"
"Where Rests John Horse?: Memory, Gender, and Sustained Racial Illegibility in the Black Seminole Diaspora"
Dr. Nancy Plankey-Videla, Associate Professor | Sociology
Abstract:
Based on 301 interviews with deported and returned individuals to Mexico from the U.S. and 42 follow-up interviews, I trace how their mode of return to Mexico interacts with social, economic, and emotional factors to lead them to diverse understandings of “home,” and thus different post-return trajectories. Individuals whose sense of home is rooted in family, a sense of freedom, pragmatism, and work choose to stay in Mexico (65% of interviewed). About 30% are suspended in Mexico, with 80% of these waiting for legal options or prohibitions of return to expire, and 20% existing on the US-Mexico border with their bodies in Mexico, but their emotional lives in the US. The last category (14%) is completely uprooted; with home being the U.S., they will return at all costs.
Mark Mallory, Ph.D. Student | History
Abstract:
The Black Seminole community formed in the 18th century when African maroons from slavery formed settlements within emergent Seminole territory in Florida. When the United States invaded Seminole homelands, Black Seminoles fought as guerillas, their conflict threatening to spill over into a broader enslaved revolt. Black Seminoles were later instrumental in the dispossession of Kickapoo, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, and Indé groups from the Rio Grande borderland, working as military scouts in exchange for promises of land. Representations drawn from this history have developed discordant symbolic roles for Black Seminoles—as either an icon of racial solidarity or a symbol of Black and Native co-complicity in each other’s oppression. Collaborating with Black Seminole community members, I examine the contested representation and frequent erasure of borderland Black Seminoles."
The Colloquium Series offers Glasscock Center Fellows an opportunity to discuss a work-in-progress with faculty and graduate students from different disciplines. Each colloquium begins with the presenter’s short (10-15 minute) exposition of the project, after which the floor is open for comments and queries. The format is by design informal, conversational, and interdisciplinary.
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