Neill Esquibel-Kennedy

Neill Gabrielle Esquibel-Kennedy is a third-generation union member from the working-class, Mexican American neighborhood of Oakland in Topeka, Kansas. She received her undergraduate degree in American Studies with a minor in Latino/a Studies and is now currently a PhD candidate in American Studies all at the University of Kansas. Her research interests include the intersections of race, space, and place, immigration, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. Her dissertation, "Becoming Mexican Kansas: A Genealogy of Racial Capitalism and Community-Building" argues for a complicated and contradictory story of community-building in the context of the continued movement through and negotiation of the institutions that shaped people's daily lives and inspired their dreams. Rather than conventional historical or sociological methodology this work is framed by the critical geographical concept of space -- place given meaning through human agency--as well as genealogy to examine the longevity of Mexican Kansas. These conceptual approaches capture my use of archival sources, cultural performance, and oral histories.