CSRC Newsletter - January 2017

Cardboard. It’s everywhere, yet we do not see it for what it is: the cobblestone or brick of a global consumer culture. It’s a cereal box, a greeting card, a book cover, a container for personal and business documents. It’s the appliance box that became my first and only spaceship. It’s what makes the digital age possible, from the ubiquitous boxes of online commerce to Google Cardboard, which turns your smartphone into a virtual reality experience. It’s the material for designer furniture and architecture, starting with Frank Gehry’s Wiggle Chair in 1972. It’s the communication system and shelter for the homeless. It’s a picket sign. It’s the canvas for an art of protest.

 

At this year’s LA Art Show (see News and Events below), Southern California artists Ramiro Gomez and Louis Hock will present two works that are each eight feet tall and (combined) run nearly 170 feet in length. Gomez’s Cut-Outs is a striking installation with two primary components: a mural of modern domestic scenes that one would expect to see in home décor magazines, and, cut out from the mural and positioned in front of it, figures that are essential to these spaces and yet are never depicted: Latino domestic workers. Meanwhile, Hock’s a wall evokes President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed border wall between the US and Mexico. This wall halves the large open space where performances and installations will be exhibited and, more critically, confronts and disorients visitors by interrupting the natural flow of foot traffic. Both works are constructed from cardboard, in the form of corrugated fiberboard and bricks of recycled paper pulp.

 

During the protests in Paris in May 1968, graffiti with the slogan “Sous les pavés, la plage!” (Under the cobblestones, the beach!) served as a poetic directive to protesters to dig up the city’s cobblestone roads and throw the stones at the police. The “beach” was the layer of sand upon which the cobblestones rested. It was also a utopian destination, where the sand meets the water. Stones and sand, bricks and mortar—the building blocks for civilization. But cardboard and internet? We tend to think of the digital era as one that has left the material world behind. Now we go to another beach, different from the one evoked in May 1968: we surf the web. And unlike the cobblestones and bricks of earlier societal infrastructures, cardboard is discarded once the object it contains has been unwrapped. Yet artists today understand: “Under the cardboard, the beach.”

 

 

The CSRC is pleased to participate for the first time in the LA Art Show, which takes place January 11–15 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was invited to curate a special set of installations and performances for the twenty-second annual fair. Called “Fragments from Home,” it will feature the work of Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Ramiro Gomez, and Louis Hock, artists whose work will appear in the forthcoming exhibition Home—So Different, So Appealing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). For details of the works that will be presented, including an opening night “destruction” performance by Ortiz, see Events (below). Works by Gomez and Hock are also currently on view at the CSRC Library (see Library). To find out more about the LA Art Show, visit http://www.laartshow.com/.

 

On January 17 the CSRC will launch a crowdfunding campaign for the upcoming CSRC-organized exhibition Home—So Different, So Appealing at LACMA. This exhibition will mark the first time a major Los Angeles museum will hold an extensive group show focused on U.S. Latino and Latin American art from the 1950s to the present. With over ninety works of art, this is also the largest exhibition the CSRC has ever produced! But we need your help to make it a reality. The goal of the campaign, which is hosted by UCLA Spark, the university’s crowdfunding platform, is to raise $10,000 in forty-five days to go toward artwork installation and catalog production. In return for your generosity, we offer a range of thank-you gifts, from social media shout-outs, to your name in the exhibition catalog, to art books from CSRC Press, to a private tour of the exhibition followed by lunch. One signed silk-screen print by Salomón Huerta, Home artist and UCLA Bruin, is available for a $2,500 donation. All donations are tax-deductible. Home, which is part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, has been funded in part by grants from the Getty Foundation. Home will be the first PST exhibition to open in 2017, thereby setting the tone for unexplored and unexpected approaches to appreciating art from the Americas. To make a donation, visit https://spark.ucla.edu/home. Thank you for your support.

 

Uncompromised – The Lupe Anguiano Story is now available in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon.com. Author Debora Wright uses interviews and Anguiano’s personal papers at the CSRC to present the life story of the Chicana civil rights activist, who is now eighty-seven years old. A portion of the proceeds will go to Anguiano herself, to ease her current living expenses. In 2007, the CSRC held an event with keynote speaker Gloria Steinem to celebrate the CSRC Library’s receipt of the Lupe Anguiano Papers, 1944–2007, and to launch the CSRC’s Mujeres Initiative, which now boasts over fifty collections. Along with Steinem and Bella Abzug, Anguiano was one of the founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and all three women were key activists for the Equal Rights Amendment.

 

KCET’s Artbound announced its ten most-read stories of 2016. At number 2 is “Veteranas and Rucas: Documenting 1990s Chicano Youth Culture,” which discusses Guadalupe Rosales’s archive of photographs documenting the Chicano underground in Southern California during the 1990s and a related event she organized at the CSRC last January.

 

Charlene Villaseñor Black, CSRC associate director and professor of art history and Chicana/o studies, has been awarded a substantial grant from the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation to organize an international colloquium titled “Renaissance Futurities: Science, Art, Invention” at the Château de la Bretesche in Missillac, France, July 9–12. The colloquium will convene ten international scholars from the fields of art history, art, conservation, physics, aeronautics, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. The group will publish an anthology of their transdisciplinary findings with Black and Maite Alvarez, project specialist at the J. Paul Getty Museum, serving as co-editors.

 

The CSRC congratulates Maria Elena Ruiz on her promotion to adjunct associate professor in the UCLA School of Nursing, effective July 1. Ruiz served as CSRC associate director from 2010 to 2012 and continues to serve on the CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee.

 

Yvette Martínez-Vu, a CSRC IUPLR Mellon Fellow who received her PhD in the UCLA Department of Theater in 2016, has been appointed assistant director of UC Santa Barbara’s McNair Scholars Program. Her responsibilities include advising, teaching, grant writing, research, and project management. Congratulations, Yvette!

 

 

CSRC IAC postdoctoral scholar Vanessa Díaz was quoted in an article discussing the need to track hateful acts in the US in order to effect policy change, despite complications associated with hate crime reports.

International Business News, December 1, 2016 (PDF)

 

Using the film Arrival as an analogy, CSRC director Chon Noriega’s op-ed for The Huffington Post urges the U.S. population to rely upon the power of a united people despite disagreements. 

Huffington Post, November 30, 2016 (PDF)

 

 All “In the News” articles are available in PDF format on the CSRC website.

 

To kick off this twenty-second annual international art event, the opening night gala will feature the performance "Couch Destruction: Angel Release (Pennies from Heaven)” by veteran artist and El Museo del Barrio founder Raphael Montañez Ortiz. Performance begins at 9:00 p.m. To purchase tickets, click here. The CSRC is a co-sponsor of this event.

 

This year’s show will present a slate of new programming developed with Los Angeles’s major art institutions, including the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. See painting, sculpture, works on paper, installation, photography, performances, and video works for sale, presented by ninety leading galleries from more than eighteen countries. "Fragments from Home," special programing curated by CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, will feature performances by destructivist artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz and installations by Ramiro Gomez and Louis Hock.

 

General Show Hours:

Thursday, January 12–Saturday, January 14: 11am–7pm

Sunday January 15, 2017: 11am–5pm

General Admission (single day): $30

To purchase tickets, click here.

For more information visit, the LA Art Show website.

The CSRC is a co-sponsor of this event.

 

LA Art Show (with special performance by Raphael Montañez Ortiz)
Saturday, January 14, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
Los Angeles Convention Center - West Hall, 1201 South Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90015
Join us for "Piano Destruction Ritual: Cowboy and Indian, Part Two," a special performance by Raphael Montañez Ortiz. This performance is free with LA Art Show admission.

The CSRC is a co-sponsor of this event.

 

 

On December 5, CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores was invited by Mayor Eric Garcetti, First Lady Amy Wakeland, and the Getty House Foundation Board of Directors to attend the Engage LA lecture “Los Angeles Public Library: The Future Happens Here.” The event included special guest speaker Attica Locke, author and board member of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. In addition, guests had the opportunity to experience the Los Angeles Public Library’s latest innovative programs through interactive stations that highlighted LAPL visual collections, its digital media lab, and the work of LAPL partner LA Makerspace. Flores looks forward to finding ways these technologies can be applied to help serve CSRC library patrons. She also had the opportunity to meet Mayor Garcetti and the LAPL city librarian, John F. Szabo. See her live tweets from the event at @ucla_csrc.

 

Library exhibition on artwork continues
Now on display in the CSRC Library and vitrine is the exhibition Taking to the Streets: Art in the Public Space at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, featuring photographs, cardboard cutouts, and a video triptych. The impetus for this show is a recent donation to the CSRC of a bus-mounted art poster by David Avalos, Louis Hock, and Elizabeth Sisco titled Welcome to America’s Finest Tourist Plantation. In 1988 the three artists launched a public art project that placed the poster on the back of one hundred city buses, sending a message about the labor that supports the area’s tourist industry. The piece was conserved at UCLA and is now on permanent display at the CSRC. Curated by Karen Rapp, previous director of the Vincent Price Art Museum, the exhibition highlights diverse selections from the CSRC’s archival holdings as well as previous projects that utilize public space as a site for artistic engagement and production. Works by Ramiro Gomez, Daniel J. Martinez, and Sandra de la Loza round out the exhibition. It will be on view during regular library hours through Winter Quarter.
 

 

Aztlán, the premier journal of Chicana/o studies, is inviting new submissions! Aztlán publishes scholarship relevant to Chicana/o studies from all disciplines and interdisciplinary research as well. We welcome submissions in English and Spanish. We are seeking submissions for all three areas of the journal:

 

Our essays are research-based and come from a wide variety of disciplines—literature, sociology, history, political science, the arts, linguistics, gender studies, ethnic studies, and many other fields—but they always engage the Chicana/o experience. All essays are peer reviewed and are frequently revised to meet the journal’s standards for quality research. Essays typically run about 10,000–12,000 words in length.

 

The dossier section provides a forum for multiple and shorter engagements with a specific theme that examines an aspect of Chicana/o studies; this might be an object of study, theoretical or disciplinary questions, a methodology, or one scholar’s work. The dossier section, while still of a scholarly nature, is designed to be exploratory, provocative, or experimental in approach. Aztlán will consider working with a guest curator—a scholar who wishes to create a dossier theme and can help manage dossier development. Contact Heather Birdsall at hbirdsall@chicano.ucla.edu to explore this opportunity.

 

If you are interested in writing a book review for us, we will gladly consider suggested titles, or we can recommend a book that matches your field of interest. To inquire about reviews, contact our book review coordinator at revieweditor@chicano.ucla.edu.

 

To submit: All submissions should be sent to our submission inbox at submissions@chicano.ucla.edu. For complete information about Aztlán and our submission guidelines, please visit the CSRC website. Please direct queries to Heather Birdsall, assistant editor, at hbirdsall@chicano.ucla.edu. We look forward to receiving your submissions.

 

The Inter-University Program for Latino Research is now accepting applications for the IUPLR/Mellon Fellowship Program (academic year 2017-18). The program supports ABD doctoral students in the humanities who are writing dissertations in Latina/o studies. Doctoral students in the social sciences whose research uses humanities methods may also be considered. The fellowship facilitates completion of the dissertation and provides professional development, job market support, and mentoring for students who will graduate in Spring 2018.

With support from the Andrew G. Mellon Foundation, IUPLR will select fellows through five designated research centers. Applicants must be affiliated with the following centers to be eligible:  

The Center for Mexican American Studies and the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas-Austin

 

The fellowship includes a $25,000 stipend and travel support to attend IUPLR conferences and a required two-week summer institute in Chicago. For more information and to view the online application, visit https://form.jotform.com/62325487948166

Application deadline: January 6. All queries should be directed to the Mellon coordinator, Dr. Jennifer Boles, jlboles@uic.edu.

 

The UCLA Institute of American Cultures (IAC) offers in-residence appointments to support postdoctoral research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicanas/os. We especially encourage applications that advance our understanding of new social and cultural realities occasioned by the dramatic population shifts of recent decades, including greater heterogeneity within ethnic groups and increased interethnic contact. In the event that an award is for less than three quarters the stipend will be prorated in accordance with the actual length of the award.

 

The 2017-2018 IAC visiting scholars will receive funding for one or more quarters with an approximate stipend of $35,000 for three quarters (contingent upon rank, experience, and date of completion of their terminal degree). For visiting scholars who have a home institution, these funds can be used to supplement sabbatical support for a total that does not exceed the candidate’s current institutional salary. These visiting scholars will be paid through their home institution and will be expected to continue their health benefits through that source. Visiting scholars who do not have a home institution will receive a stipend for living expenses and may be eligible for health benefits. In the event that an award is for less than the nine-month appointment, the stipend will be prorated in accordance with the actual length of the award. Awardees may receive up to $4,000 in research support. The Bunche Center for African American Studies will not host a visiting scholar during the 2017-18 academic year. The online application is available at: https://sa.ucla.edu/IAC/VisitingScholar

Application deadline: January 12, 2017. For more information visit: http://www.iac.ucla.edu/fellowships_visitingscholar.html 
 

The Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) will hold its sixth biennial Siglo XXI Conference at the University of Texas, San Antonio, May 17-19, 2017.  This year’s conference theme is “Mapping Latino Research.” Papers and panels are requested that address the state of Latino research, and research and methods that have the potential to improve understanding of U.S. Latinos today. Submissions deadline: January 30, 2017.

For more information: https://iuplr.uic.edu/iuplr/conferences/siglo-xxi-2017-call-for-papers. The CSRC is a founding member of the IUPLR.

 

Update to conference attendees: Hotel registration is now available discounted rate of $115/ a night with breakfast included has been offered by the Doubletree Hilton in Downtown San Antonio for our event. Please take advantage of these discounted rates and reserve your rooms by the hold cut-off date of 4/30/2017. Use the following personalized link to book your stay: IUPLR Reservation Link. Conference registration is also open. Register by clicking here. The CSRC is a founding member of the IUPLR.

 

The mission of the Institute of American Cultures (IAC) is to conduct and facilitate research on the major traditionally underrepresented ethnic minority groups in the US and to advance our understanding of the new social and cultural realities in this nation brought about by recent unparalleled population shifts, a phenomenon which we term emerging America.

The IAC, which houses the four research Centers (the Asian American Studies Center, the American Indian Studies Center, the Bunche Center for Research on African Americans, and the Chicano Studies Research Center), announces the availability of small grants for support of research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicanas/os, as well as the new population dynamics. It particularly encourages proposals that will make a contribution to the research interests of the Ethnic Studies Research Centers, including interethnic/interracial and multiethnic/multiracial topics. The IAC also invites proposals that will increase collaboration between the Centers and/or between the Centers and other campus units. The online application is available at: https://sa.ucla.edu/IAC/ResearchGrant
Applications deadline: March 13, 2017. For more information visit: http://www.iac.ucla.edu/fellowships_research.html