Co-directed by faculty members Dr. Brenda Sendejo (Anthropology) and Dr. Alison Kafer (Feminist Studies) the LHP is a faculty-student research project that aims to enhance undergraduate education and provide resources on Latina/o and Chicana/o history in the Central Texas region. While the project began with the goal of digitizing the “Rostros y Almas/Faces and Souls” exhibit on local Tejanas, it has grown to encompass the broader mission of enhancing understandings of Latina/o and Chicana/o history. The LHP does so through the collection of oral histories from past and present members of Southwestern community as well as several activists, including key figures in the Chicana/o Movement in Texas.

The “Rostros y Almas/Faces and Souls” exhibit began in 1992 when photographer Mary Jessie Garza and co-curators Mary Visser and Lupita Barrera Bryant sought to create an exhibit that displayed the work of Latina women throughout Central Texas. The original exhibit displayed 31 photographs of the women paired with portrait descriptions. It debuted at the 1992 Brown Symposium held at Southwestern University, titled “Discoveries of America.” This campus event recognized the Quincentennial of Columbus’ arrival to the Americas. According to the 1992 Winter Southwestern Quarterly, the symposium featured a “range of academic disciplines who discussed interconnected meanings of America.” The exhibit discussed Columbus’ lasting effect on the various peoples of the Americas that were and are marginalized by the history of colonization. As of 2017, the original “Rostros y Almas” exhibit remains on display in the F.W. Olin Building at Southwestern University.