Dr. Jennifer Jenkins, New Director of the Southwest Center

Dr. Jennifer Jenkins, New Director of the Southwest Center

July 5, 2025
Jennifer Jenkins new director of the Southwest Center

We feel privileged to welcome Dr. Jennifer Jenkins as the new Director of the Southwest Center, stepping into the role following the distinguished tenure of Jeff Banister. Dr. Jenkins brings a wealth of interdisciplinary expertise to the position—holding advanced degrees in American literatures and cultures as well as Information Science, and serving as Research Social Scientist and Director of the Bear Canyon Center for Southwest Humanities. Her extensive curatorial and archival work—ranging from founding Home Movie Day Tucson and the Tombstone Home Movie Project to integrating nearly 500 films by and about Native peoples into the University of Arizona’s digital archives—underscores her commitment to preserving and amplifying the rich visual and literary cultures of the US-Mexico borderlands.

Dr. Jenkins is a prolific scholar whose achievements include a 2024 CUES Distinguished Fellowship and leadership in the groundbreaking Tribesourcing Southwest Film Project, which received prestigious NEH grants in 2017 and 2022. She also co‑leads an international digital residency exchange, Indigenous Knowledges, deepening global collaboration between Indigenous scholars and institutions. Under her direction, the Southwest Center is poised to flourish at the intersection of archival innovation, community engagement, and regional storytelling—advancing its mission to foster understanding across the Southwest and beyond.

In her own words:

It is a privilege to write to you as the new director of the Southwest Center, and to thank you for your continued engagement with our collective work. Jeff Banister has left big shoes to fill, and I am grateful for his leadership and steady hand over the past eight years. 

The great joy of stepping into the directorship is to be able to help further the work of our incredible core faculty: Maribel Alvarez’s celebratory preservation folklore and ongoing stewardship of the beloved Tucson Meet Yourself; Esteban Azcona’s work with vibrant borderlands mariachi history and ongoing adaptation; Jeff Banister’s emerging work on ancestral geographies of water in the Southwest and Mexico; (newly promoted, yay!) Robin Reineke and Mirza Monterroso's ongoing care-based border forensic work; and the contagious energy and curiosity of David Yetman and Dan Duncan on In The Americas. We are all thrilled to work with the amazing, multi-talented Carlos Quintero. Please check out their linked profiles on our website!

As you may have heard, the SW Center is joining seven other smaller units in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences under the umbrella of the School of Global Studies. This administrative reorganization doesn’t affect our day-to-day activities, but it does streamline bureaucratic processes and provide us with a layer of insulation in these interesting times in university life. 

I’ve met many of you, some many years ago and some quite recently. Our paths may have crossed through activities at the Arizona Historical Society or Adobe Corral of the Westerners; maybe you brought family films to Home Movie Day Tucson at the Loft Cinema or attended a screening at Puro Mexicano Film Festival or Film Fest Tucson. It’s a cliché to say that we stand on the shoulders of giants, but I‘ve been very lucky to listen and learn from luminaries such as Leland Sonnichsen, Jim Griffith, Bunny Fontana, J.C. Mutschler, Bruce Dinges, and Judy Temple. I was also lucky enough to spend several stints in Oaxaca studying 16th century church architecture with Jim Griffith. Such a treat for an English major with a specialization in 19th century American Literature! 
 
As a film historian, I work at the crossroads of history, moviemaking, storytelling, and popular culture, with special interest in vernacular cinema in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands and beyond. Those projects have ranged from a book on Charles and Lucile Herbert’s Western Ways Film Service to the Tombstone Home Movie Project to short films made by itinerant filmmakers in Southwestern communities during the Depression to the Greek-immigrant Diamos family’s string of movie theatres from Tucson to the NM border. Currently, I’m working on a comparison of films shown at the Japanese incarceration camps in Arizona and New Mexico and at the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos that has expanded to include what civilian screens were showing in the rural Southwest during the war years. 

As the Southwest Center moves forward, you’ll see many of the same activities that Jeff has stewarded so ably: the Southwest Center Spring Speaker Series; the Tanklersley Laureate Lecture; the JSW Podcast; and of course our signature trips! This fall, Dr. Luis Coronado Guel and I will be leading a trip to San Luis Potosí, and next spring we will return to Rio Sonora. Both trips will be full of immersive, place-based learning about local customs, built and natural environments, foodways, and commonalities among people of good will. 

As Jeff steps away for a well-deserved sabbatical, I’ll be subbing as Editor of the Journal of the Southwest for 2025-26. With our Spring 2025 issue, we shift to fully digital publication. Issues can be found on Project Muse.

I’m looking forward to seeing you at upcoming Southwest Center events! If you have ideas or requests about the kinds of programming you’d like to see, please do reach out to me. 

With hopes for a full monsoon season, 

Jennifer