On June 5, 2024, The Humanities Institute presented the 2024 Night at the Museum, featuring Watsonville is in the Heart and highlighting Sowing Seeds: Filipino American Stories from the Pajaro Valley, a community-driven exhibition that uplifts stories of Filipino American migration and labor in Watsonville and the greater Pajaro Valley of the Central Coast.
Several of the most prominent thinkers in Filipino American history: Catherine Ceniza Choy, Richard “Rick” Baldoz, and Rudy Guevarra, Jr presented their academic insights.
THI’s annual Night at the Museum event welcomes members of the public to experience the ongoing exhibitions and gallery spaces at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. This year’s exhibition brought together oral history, archival materials, and contemporary works of art in an evening of conversation on the role of archives, the work of preserving memories, and the histories of Filipinos in the United States.
Watch the video of the event here:
Event photos:
About Our Speakers
Dr. Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr. is Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. He is the author of Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego, and most recently, Aloha Compadre: Latinxs in Hawaiʻi. He is a former Ford Foundation Senior Fellow and UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Guevarra is also co-editor of the forthcoming book, Culinary Mestizaje: Racial Mixing, Migration and Foodways in the U.S.
Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy is a writer, historian, and professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. She is the author of the books Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History; Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America; and Asian American Histories of the United States. The daughter of Filipino immigrants, she was born and raised in New York City. She currently lives in Berkeley with her husband Greg Choy.
Dr. Rick Baldoz is a third-generation Filipino-American. His research focuses on race, immigration law, and the politics of citizenship. His first major book The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America 1898-1946 (NYU Press) examines the connection between the U.S. ascendancy as a global power and the racialization of Filipinos domestically. His book won book awards from the American Sociological Association and the American Library Association. His current book project is on US immigration policy over the past half century highlighting the interplay between US foreign policy entanglements and large scale population flows to the United States.
Acknowledgments
Night at the Museum is co-sponsored by I’m Just Nosy, a special collaboration between UCSC Special Collections & Archives and Watsonville is in the Heart (WIITH). I’m Jusy Nosy is a zine project highlighting the Pajaro Valley Filipino American community’s genealogical research and archiving expertise. As told by Maia Mislang (WIITH Undergraduate Public Fellow) with support from Meleia Simon Reynolds (Co-Director of the WIITH Community Digital Archive) and Sam Regal (Librarian in UCSC Special Collections), it spotlights Juanita Sulay Wilson, community matriarch and self-taught historian/archivist, whose work has been foundational to the Tobera Project and Watsonville is in the Heart. The zine is a resource for folks who wish to explore their own family and community histories. This project was generously supported by California Rare Book School’s Radical Librarianship Institute.
Watsonville is in the Heart and Sowing Seeds is presented with support from The Tobera Project, California Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, UCSC Humanities Division, Arts Division, Division of Social Sciences, Center for Labor and Community, Office of Research, Arts Research Institute, Committee on Research, Society of Hellman Fellows, Institute for Social Transformation, and Dr. Rebecca S. Hernandez, member of Rise Together, Community Foundation Santa Cruz County. The exhibition is made possible with generous contributions from Cristana DeGuzman and Bryce Lee, Cathy and Greg Reyes, and Ow Family Properties.
This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a partner of the NEH. Visit www.calhum.org. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of California Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.