Dr. Calvo-Quirós' current research project investigates the relationship between state violence and the phantasmagoric along the US-Mexico border region during the twentieth century, in particular how the global legacies of North American Empire and capitalism shape the terrains of the "fantastic," the "imaginary" and the emergence of popular religiosity among Latina/o communities. This research looks at the US-Mexico border not only as a socio-political space of conflict and struggle but simultaneously as a 2,000-mile strip of "haunted" land, inhabited by many imaginary creatures, monsters, popular saints and fantastic tales. The project analyzes how imaginary and vernacular cultural productions work as sophisticated historic and epistemic archives that respond to changes on the modus operandi of capitalism and emerge during periods of crisis within the past one hundred years. Furthermore, it proposes that through the imaginary and the uncanny these communities developed "clandestine," "subversive," and intellectual maneuvers to challenge and expose oppression, to retain flexible forms of collective memory, navigate the conditions that oppress them and envision a different world.