Through three cooperating classes, culture-language-media workshops, a group documentary conducted by artists from the Latino community, and partnerships between Duke students and local high school and community college students, with final outcomes that include film screenings, photo-murals and a multimedia exhibit encompassing the processes and products produced, we propose to build two-way connections between Duke and the Latino Community. 

The central goal of this project is to expand the bridges we have begun building between Duke and the Durham Latino communities and simultaneously make them into bi-directional ones.  In other words, we will seek to offer means for the Latino community to have greater access to our university and to have Duke students engage the community both in the community and here at Duke.  Duke can be changed by these relationships, as will the community that surrounds us; thus the metaphor of the two-way bridge. 

We will build a partnership between our collaborating faculty and staff – representing the Center for Documentary Studies, the Spanish Language Program, The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, The Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South, and DukeEngage on the Border/Encuentros de la Frontera – and local organizations representing the Latino community.  We will continue to forge a partnership with two key collaborators, both of them Latino artists who already reside in Durham: one is visual artist and muralist, Cornelio Campos and the other is filmmaker, Mauricio Andrada.

Through collaborative art and interpretation as well as bidirectional learning, this project will teach the various constituencies the geopolitical implications surrounding immigration, immigration policy, border crossing, and integration of diasporic communities into local and national communities.  Students and faculty may become better positioned to offer innovative solutions in the form of policy and research, as well as to help educate the greater community.