The Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers, 1942-2004 are located in the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. They contain published and unpublished works along with photographs, correspondence, artwork, notes, interviews, etc. As a woman of color who is interested in issues of social justice, disrupting dominant ideological binaries, and intersections of race, class, and gender, Anzaldúa has much to offer the field of rhetoric and communication studies. The purpose of the study is to derive Anzaldúa’s theory of social change. As a woman of color, Anzaldúa simultaneously aligns and differentiates herself from the Chicano movement and the feminist movement. Citing her, and other Chicana feminists concerns, she uses a theory of the B/borderlands as a generative theory from which she theorizes using nepantla and images. Her theory of social change is implicit and available to rhetors upon an examination of the official and unofficial texts available in her archive. Diana Taylor’s concepts of the archive (official texts) and the repertoire (unofficial performances and iterations) are used to examine Anzaldúa’s archival collection. The artifacts included an examination of Anzaldúa’s birth certificate and corrections compared with a short story “Her Name Never Got Called.” In addition a documentary Altar is examined and compared with conversations that led to its creation. An analysis of Anzaldúa’s archive suggests that there is an oscillation between the official archives and the unofficial performances. These movements reveal Anzaldúa’s favor for images as instrumental in her theory-making process; they reveal her imagistic theory of social change. Applying a theory of discourse from the borderlands that emerges out of the archive of Anzaldúa will make rhetoricians better equipped to study texts that speak back to dominant discourses and refuse oppressive binaries. / text

In the United States, Christmastime has become a time of tension between the holy ideals of family togetherness, childhood innocence, and goodwill towards men and commercial idolatry. Christ and Santa Claus are pitted against each other in the war on Christmas between religion and secularism instead of feasting together on ham and figgy pudding in the traditional fashion. While many would agree that the everyday realities of the Christmas season do not often live up to the ideals imposed upon the holiday, few are able to tell why this is so or even trace the roots of their discontent. In an exploration of the unique anomaly of the hierosecular American Christmas, I propose that the unique systems of Christmas belief extend beyond the usual boundaries of sacred and secular to create a complex web of different beliefs that are performed together to create the unique feeling of Christmas. From a performance theory perspective, I use performance as both traditionally theatrical and as a paradigm for understanding and expressing belief in an effort to explore the essential but elusively defined cultural signifiers of the American Christmas. Through a series of case studies focusing on various traditions of Christmas performance, I apply the performance theories of Diana Taylor, Patrice Pavis, Victor Turner and others to such Christmas staples as Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. In doing so, I propose different points for viewing Christmas and introducing new points of inquiry for questioning the meaning of Christmas, belief, and performance

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