Co-Principal Investigator
Dr. Lorena Chambers studies the live performances of Mexican and Mexican American entertainers that emerged in late nineteenth-century popular culture as a by-product of the cultural diplomacy between the United States and Mexico.
A scholar of cultural, gender, and Latinx history, Dr. Chambers is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Departments of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan where she is writing a manuscript based on her dissertation: “From Statecraft to Stagecraft: The Politics of Peddling ‘Mexicanidad’ in U.S. Culture, 1886-1906.”
Her second book project, premised on oral histories, primary sources, and her professional work experience, chronicles the history of Latinx voter outreach at the Democratic National Committee and the larger Democratic establishment from 2000 through the 2020 presidential election. In 2021, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Latino Initiatives Pool awarded funding and support for Dr. Chambers’ digital humanities project titled: The First 100: 50 Years of Chicanas Changing History. As Co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Chambers will conduct on-camera oral histories of pioneer Chicana historians who shaped the field of US history intellectually and pedagogically. Additionally, in 2021 the Buffalo Bill Center of the West awarded Dr. Chambers a research grant and named her Associate Editor of The Papers of William F. Cody to continue analyzing the role of vaquero and charro performers as cultural diplomats in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.