Dante Olivas
Chicana and Chicano Studies Faculty
Program Coordinator
Research Statement:
Soon after graduation, he started the Master’s program in Chicanx Studies in Spring 2023. While born in Albuquerque, NM, Dante considers his querencia, feeling of home and how that impacts your identity and relation to space, up and down the Rio Grande, often focusing on his experiences up north in Taos, NM, and San Luis, CO, as sites of connection to identity and community. As a writer, he focuses on the literary analysis of stories about his querencia. He is bridging his querencia to speculative fiction and the impact it has had on his exploration of what feels like home, including stories about aliens, Big Foot, and Chicano folklore cryptids like el Cucuy, la Llorona, and la Chupacabra that filled his childhood with interest in the unknown.
Profile:
Dante is a non-traditional, first-generation, and transfer graduate student in the Chicanx Studies Department. He received his associate degree in Sociology from Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) in 2018. He transferred his credits from CNM to the University of New Mexico (UNM), where he earned his bachelor’s in Sociology and Chicanx Studies in 2022. His Sociology foci were in social networks and how Erving Goffman’s theory of Dramaturgy impacts a complete sense of self. His Chicanx Studies focus was on querencia and personal narratives, as well as social networks in small communities that impact how they talk about querencia.
