From Resurrection to Insurrection: Revolutionary Artistry and the Cultural Impact of Santa Teresa Urrea

This dissertation project, “From Resurrection to Insurrection: Revolutionary Artistry and the Cultural Impact of Santa Teresa Urrea,” investigates Teresa Urrea’s historical and fictional representations to untangle the dependent structures of race, gender, and indigeneity within Mexican, Chicanx, and US discourse formations. I posit that her story not only informs our understanding of a defining moment in US-Mexico borderlands history, but it also serves as a case study for Mexican American and Chicanx Cultural Studies that transcends a north/south binary, subverts masculine centric historiographies, and accounts for Indigenous and female agency in the Mexican and Chicanx literary imaginaries. Interpreting her activities as evidence of decolonial praxis, the dissertation shows how her public performances as La Santa de Cabora disrupted settler colonialism in the borderlands and helped to maintain Indigenous presence and culture in the region.

Embargo status: Restricted until 01/2028. To request the author grant access, click on the PDF link to the left.