CSRC Fellows & Visiting Scholars 2012-2013
Reynal Guillen
Reynal Guillen holds a doctorate in the History of Science. During his tenure at the Chicano Studies Research Center, Dr. Guillen, who has been a visiting scholar at the center during the past academic year, plans to conduct research, publish findings and develop programs that engage Los Angeles Chicana/o communities with science education and public outreach. While under the mentorship of CSRC Director, Assistant Director, and associated faculty, he will also learn essential administrative skills needed to carry out such programs while expanding on his previous research in the cultural studies of science, technology, and medicine.
Rafael Figueroa
Rafael Figueroa is a research associate and doctoral student in history and regional studies at Instituto de Investigaciones Histórico Sociales, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. He is also a Fulbright scholar. While at the CSRC, Mr. Figueroa will advance his research on Son Jarocho in the California diaspora. As Mr. Figueroa describes, “Son Jarocho has been part of the cultural life in California since the early twentieth century. However, it was not until the nineties that this music began to develop a transnational and transcultural movement that takes up the emblem of Son Jarocho to develop communities through its traditional fiesta: the fandango.” Mr. Figueroa’s research plan includes performing ethnographic research of this movement composed of Mexicans, Mexican Americas, and Anglos.
Juanita Heredia
Juanita Heredia is the IAC post-doctoral Visiting Scholar/Researcher for the 2012-13 academic cycle. She holds a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literature and is associate professor of Spanish in the Global Languages and Cultures Department, at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, where she is also affiliated with Ethnic Studies. Her teaching and research interests focus on Chicana/o and U.S. Latina/o literature and popular culture, Afro-Caribbean, and South American diasporic literature and popular culture, cultural studies, gender studies, transnational studies, comparative world literature, ethnomusicology, film studies and post-colonial studies. Her research project, "Transnational Latina/os and the City: Negotiating Urban Experiences in Twenty-first Century Literature and Popular Culture," will be further developed during her year at the CSRC. In this monograph in progress, Transnational Latina/os and the City, Dr. Heredia illustrates how contemporary fiction and media created by recognized U.S. Latina/o public intellectuals are the product of negotiating urban experiences within different transnational contexts. Her scholarship incorporates transnational, interdisciplinary and comparative approaches. Through fiction and media, Dr. Heredia examines the agency of Latinas/os as as transnational representatives from Chicana/o, Dominican American, Panamanian American, and Peruvian American literature and popular culture in the United States in relationship to their travels from the United States to Latin America and other global cities. During her tenure at the CSRC, Dr. Heredia will consult an array of critical criticism to examine these texts through a multidisciplinary lens: literary criticism, history, popular culture, and transnational and urban studies.
Rosa Urtiaga
Rosa Urtiaga is a doctoral student in English Studies at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. During her visit at the CSRC, Ms. Urtiaga will analyze the representation of the Chicana, or Mexican American woman, in contemporary cinema, which includes Hollywood cinema, independent cinema, and Chicano movies. From a cultural perspective, her Ph.D. thesis aims to explore through diverse theoretical frameworks—border studies, Latino and Chicano Studies, gender studies—the social, historical, and cultural construction of the racial and generic concepts that circumscribe and oppress transnational Chicanas.
Carlos Haro
Carlos Haro, Assistant Director Emeritus of the CSRC, will continue his research into Chicano education and the history of Chicanos and the schools, oral histories, and comparative and international education. Dr. Haro is responsible for CSRC’s annual Latina/o Education Summit series at UCLA, which assesses the critical issues facing Latina/os in the education pipeline from kindergarten through graduate studies.