Brian Luna Lucero will graduate with his Ph.D. in history from the University of New Mexico in 2012. His dissertation, ‘Invention and Contention: Memory, Place, and Identity in the American Southwest, 1848-1940’, examines memory and commemoration of the Spanish colonial past in three Spanish settlements that grew into prominent American cities: Tucson, Arizona, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and San Antonio, Texas.