CSRC Newsletter - June 2019

VOLUME 17,  NUMBER 9

DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

The facts are on our side. Consider the percentages that artist Linda Vallejo employs in the titles of recent works: 30% of the US Population Will Be Latino in 2050; Los Angeles 48.3%; 75% of Immigrants Are Lawful; National Latino Artists 9.12%.

But facts about demographic change are not enough to combat the ongoing dehumanization of people who are central to daily life and public culture in Los Angeles, California, and the United States. Last Saturday, Andy Ruiz Jr. became the first Mexican-descent heavyweight champion, knocking down his opponent Anthony Joshua four times. Yet for days the press focused on the loser. Joshua was a victim of the “Drake curse” (having been photographed with the rapper). He had a panic attack before the match. And on and on . . . The fact that the “chubby Mexican,” as Ruiz was called, beat Joshua fair and square was never the point. There was, in effect, no “human interest” story about this California native.

Linda Vallejo's current exhibition, Linda Vallejo: Brown Belongings, at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles, aims to change the conversation by using data to create new ways of looking at the Latina/o population. Literally. In The Brown Dot Project, dots representing census data are plotted onto gridded velum, becoming shapes, figures, and objects that place numerical data in the realm of culture and lived experience. In her series Datos Sagrados, Vallejo converts data into geometric patterns in shades of brown and white, a gesture not only to abstractions produced by the avant-garde in the early twentieth century but also to art produced in the Islamic world since the seventh century. These historical gestures situate her work in the context of two crossings: that of the Moors crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to the Iberian Peninsula, and that of Mexicans crossing the US border during the Mexican Revolution and the rise of U.S. agribusiness, which required a massive labor force. These histories, woven together, are all about place and belonging. Brown belongings. 

The show also includes works from Vallejo’s The Brown Oscars series, which started as a research-based project with the CSRC in the wake of the all-white Oscar nominations for acting in 2016. Vallejo applied brown paint to photos documenting these and other actors, but also to the Oscar award itself, which is said to have been modeled after a Mexican actor-director.

LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes is a longtime partner with the CSRC. Its mission, stated on its website, is to present “untold stories [about] Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and all Latinos in the founding and continuing evolution of Southern California." Brown Belongings runs through January 13, 2020. The artist is committed to making herself available for student groups wanting to see the exhibition. School's out for the summer, but this is a show everyone must see!

Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

NEWS

UC Regent John Pérez visits CSRC

On May 8, UC Regent John Pérez visited the four ethnic studies research centers of the Institute of American Cultures. Pérez met with all of the center directors before visiting each center. Pérez was particularly interested in hearing from students participating in center programs and projects, and he invited them to express needs that are particular to communities of color on the UCLA campus. Students at the CSRC spoke about the need for more resources for undocumented students, mentorship for Latina/o students in STEM fields, and support for full-time students with young children.

Flores nominated for Librarian of the Year

CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores was one of fourteen campus librarians nominated for the 2019 Librarian of the Year award from the Librarians Association of the University of California, Los Angeles (LAUC-LA). The awardees are Marty Brennan, scholarly communication education librarian in the Charles E. Young Research Library, and Russell Johnson, curator of history and special collections for the sciences in UCLA Library Special Collections.

Epstein speaks in information studies class

On May 9, Rebecca Epstein, CSRC assistant director, was an invited speaker in the graduate seminar IS 289-3: “Content Management Systems: Perspectives and Approaches,” taught by Gregg Ruggolo. Epstein spoke about the development and functionality of the CSRC website (www.chicano.ucla.edu) and, with Kristian Allen, programmer for the UCLA Digital Library Program, discussed the complexity of building the Strachwitz Frontera Collection website (www.frontera@library.ucla.edu). Both websites utilize Drupal, an open source content management system.

Solórzano accepts tenure-track position

Rafael Ramirez Solórzano, doctoral candidate in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and recipient of a research grant from the CSRC for 2018-19 has accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor of social justice in the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies at Cal State LA. Solórzano will file his dissertation this spring and begin his new position in the fall.

Martínez-Vu presents anthology

On Wednesday, June 5, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. on in Ackerman Union, Room 2414, Yvette Martínez-Vu, a CSRC IUPLR-Mellon dissertation fellow in 2015-16 and assistant director of the McNair Scholars Program at UC Santa Barbara, will present the publication The Chicana Motherwork Anthology: Porque sin madres no hay revolución​ (University of Arizona Press, 2019). Martínez-Vu served as co-editor on the project, which features scholarship and testimonios from authors who explore the transformative labor of mothering.

Vallejo exhibition opens

Linda Vallejo: Brown Belongings, a solo exhibition of artworks by Los Angeles–based artist Linda Vallejo, opened June 1 at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles. The exhibition includes her series Brown Oscars, which originated as a collaborative research project between the artist at the CSRC. The exhibition is on view through January 13, 2020. For more information, visit the artist’s website.

Huerta publishes book

Former CSRC visiting scholar Alvaro Huerta has published the book Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond (Hamilton Books, 2019). Huerta is an assistant professor of urban and region planning and ethnic and women’s studies at California State Polytechnic University.

2018-19 visiting scholars report

The CSRC would like to thank its 2018-19 visiting scholars for their groundbreaking research and contributions to Latina/o scholarship. We wish them the very best.

  • Oscar Iván Arias Diaz is a PhD student in communications at Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia, and was a visiting graduate researcher at the CSRC. During his residency, he completed the paper “Latin-American Female Filmmakers: A Voice Out of the System,” which examines how technological, organizational, and legal changes in Latin American film industries between 2012 and 2018 are widening inequalities of wealth and power between male and female filmmakers across Latin America. The paper will serve as one chapter in Diaz’s dissertation, titled “The Colombian Dream: Film, Culture and Politics of Colombian Cinema in the 21st Century.”  The dissertation traces the history of film production in Colombia.

  • Cindy Cruz is an associate professor of education at UC Santa Cruz. During her residency, she completed two essays that have been accepted for publication: “Youth Ethnography,” an entry for the Oxford Youth Studies Encyclopedia, and “The Possibilities and Futurities of LGBT Youth: Thinking from a Queer of Color Critique in Educational Research," which will be included in the book “Queer Studies and Education: An International Anthology.” Cruz also completed literature reviews for her own book project, “Queer Street Youth Infrapolitics: Mobility, Surveillance, and Resistance in the New Urban Metropolis,” and drafted a related book proposal. She also completed a proposal to conduct research using the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers at UT Austin. During the year, Cruz gave lectures at the University of Utah, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University and one job talk at the University of Arizona, where she has accepted a tenured position as associate professor of education and critical youth studies in the College of Education, beginning in January 2020.

  • Raúl Pérez is a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellow and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Denver. During his residency, he published an article in American Behavioral Scientist titled “From Insult to Estrangement and Injury: The Violence of Racist Police Jokes,” secured a book contract with Stanford University Press for his research on the social and political impact of racist humor, and obtained a new position as assistant professor of sociology at the University of La Verne.

  • Roy Pérez is the 2018-19 Institute of American Cultures visiting scholar at the CSRC and an associate professor of English and ethnic studies at Willamette University. During his residency, he conducted research on Chicana photographer Laura Aguilar’s self-portraits and on race and gentrification along inland waterways in Los Angeles and Miami. This work culminated in an essay for the anthology Saturation: Racial Matter, Institutional Limits, and the Excesses of Representation (forthcoming from MIT Press and the New Museum) and presentations at UC San Diego, UMass Boston, and the University of Pittsburgh. This material will be included in his own book project, “Proximities: Queer Configurations of Race in Latinx Literature and Performance,” under consideration with New York University Press. In addition, this year Pérez received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and an award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY, and he recently accepted a new position as assistant professor with joint appointments in ethnic studies and critical gender studies at UC San Diego, beginning in January 2020.

  • Jennifer Ponce de León is a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor in the Department of English as well as Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Pennsylvania. During her residency, she completed the book manuscript “Another Aesthetics is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War,” forthcoming from Duke University Press in 2020.  She was an invited speaker at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and she presented papers at the annual conferences of the Latin American Studies Association, College Art Association, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, and Latino Art Now! She also co-organized “Counter-History and Theory,” a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania and is co-directing the Critical Theory Workshop’s summer program at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in July.
New video on CSRC YouTube

Book Talk: Genevieve Carpio presents "Collisions at the Crossroads” (May 30, 2019) (video) Genevieve Carpio, UCLA professor of Chicana/o studies and CSRC faculty advisory committee member, presented her new book, Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race (University of California Press, 2019), which demonstrates how regional authorities constructed racial hierarchies in the Inland Empire by controlling the mobility of residents. Carpio argues that permitting some people to move freely while placing limits on the mobility of others, through restraints that ranged from bicycle ordinances and traffic checkpoints to the enforcement of immigration policy, shaped attitudes toward minority populations in the region. Additional speakers included professors Eric Avila, Robert Chao Romero, and George Sanchez.

CSRC IN THE NEWS

“Professor Tackles Race, Space and Mobility in Her First Book”
UCLA Newsroom featured an article on Genevieve Carpio, UCLA professor of Chicana/o  studies and CSRC faculty advisory committee member, and her research pertaining to mobility studies. Carpio recently published the book Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race (University of California Press, 2019). The article mentions her book talk in the CSRC Library on May 30 (see News, above).  

UCLA Newsroom, May 29, 2019 (PDF)

“Photographer Laura Aguilar Invited Viewers to Take a Long, Hard Look at All Her Imperfections”
The retrospective exhibition Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell was reviewed in the Chicago Reader. The exhibition, which originally opened in 2017 at the Vincent Price Art Museum in collaboration with the Chicano Studies Research Center, is currently on view at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.  

Chicago Reader, May 21, 2019 (PDF)

“UCLA’s Ethnic Studies Centers Look Back on Accomplishments, Discuss Goals for Future”
The Daily Bruin published a story on a roundtable discussion May 18 featuring the directors of UCLA’s four ethnic studies centers. The discussion was held in the Chicano Studies Research Center Library and was part of the UCLA Alumni Day celebration honoring the university’s centennial year. 

Daily Bruin, May 20, 2019 (PDF)

“Thousands Come Back to UCLA for Alumni Day Events”
In an article highlighting Alumni Day events at UCLA, UCLA Newsroom noted a roundtable discussion featuring the directors of UCLA’s four ethnic studies centers. The discussion was held in the Chicano Studies Research Center Library on May 18. 

UCLA Newsroom, May 18, 2019 (PDF)

“At 100, UCLA Celebrates, Takes Stock and Looks Ahead”
CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as part of a story discussing UCLA’s preparedness for the changing demographics of its student body. 

Los Angeles Times, May 18, 2019 (PDF)

“Chicano History Makes History in This Instagram Account”
The Instagram account of CSRC donor Guadalupe Rosales was highlighted by the online magazine Mitú. Rosales’s collection documents Chicana/o life in Southern California in the 1990s and is temporarily housed at the CSRC.

Mitú, May 6, 2019 (PDF)

“Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology”
Art Libraries Society of North America published a review of Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology, which was co-edited by CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, A VER board member Jennifer A. González, two-time CSRC visiting scholar C. Ondine Chavoya, and former CSRC arts projects coordinator Terezita Romo.  

Art Libraries Society of North America, May 2019 (PDF)

“Lessons from Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA”
CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was among the scholars and curators interviewed for a special section in the latest issue of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture. The journal is edited by CSRC associate director Charlene Villaseñor Black.

Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, vol. 1, no. 2 (April 2019) (PDF)

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

EVENTS

Symposium: “Escuchando la Frontera: Listening to Collections and Communities”
Wednesday, June 5, 12:30 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
1630 and 1102 Schoenberg Music Building, UCLA
The CSRC, in collaboration with the UCLA Music Library and UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, present a symposium in celebration of the Strachwitz Frontera Collection at UCLA. The collection, which contains over 215,000 songs celebrating North America’s Spanish-language musical heritage, is a joint project of the CSRC, the Arhoolie Foundation, and the UCLA Digital Library.
 

The symposium will include two roundtable discussions featuring writers, archivists, and educators discussing the value of the collection to UCLA and broader communities. Representatives from the Arhoolie Foundation will also be present to discuss the collection and share recordings. A reception featuring the Steve Loza Group will follow the discussion. Related publications from CSRC Press will be available for purchase. This event is made possible with support from the Office of Interdisciplinary and Cross Campus Affairs and the UCLA Center for Latino Arts, and it is free and open to the public. Registration through Eventbrite is encouraged here.

All CSRC events are free and do not require an RSVP unless otherwise noted. Programs are subject to change. For the most current information, visit the Events page on the CSRC website.

CSRC LIBRARY

Flores speaks in class on gender politics and participation

On May 2, CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores was an invited speaker for CCS 149: “Gendered Politics and Chicana/Latina Political Participation,” taught by former CSRC visiting scholar Celia Lacayo. Flores shared some of her experiences as a woman of color in academia and answered questions about her career path and encounters with gendered politics.

New collections received

The CSRC has received a new collection from Anita Miranda, a Chicana art collector known for collecting artwork by women. The materials she has donated include circulars, mailers, and other announcements for shows and performances by artists of color that date from the 1970s through the 1990s.

The CSRC is now the official archive of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) records. The CSRC was one of the founding institutions of IUPLR and continues to participate in the consortium, which now comprises twenty-four academic research centers. The IUPLR Records contain correspondence, meeting minutes, financial records, pamphlets and brochures, and research material.  The collection encompasses sixty-nine linear feet and spans the years 1983 to 2016. The collection will be available for research in June.

The CSRC was recently presented with nine mixed-media works by Lino Martinez, a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles. Born in Mexico, Martinez trained was trained as a muralist before arriving in the US and discovering printmaking and lithography. The donated works constitute an entire suite from his latest series, Campesinos y Colores, which celebrates the contributions of Latinos to U.S. culture and economy.

ADOBE LA Archive processed

The Ulises Diaz ADOBE LA Archive has been processed. Ulises Diaz is a Los Angeles–based activist, artist, and architect. In 1992, he co-founded ADOBE LA (Architects, Artists and Designers Opening the Border Edge of Los Angeles), a collective devoted to creating public art and architecture that responds to the evolving needs of the multicultural city. The collection includes design materials, correspondence, and photographs for various works and exhibitions produced by the collective. Of special note are materials from several collaborations with the Japanese American National Museum. ADOBE LA designed exhibition spaces for the museum’s permanent collection and for temporary exhibitions such as The Boyle Heights Project, which documented the Japanese American, African American, Jewish, and Latino communities that have lived in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. The collection also includes a number of essays for the book Ciudad Hibrida = Hybrid City, a collection of theoretical works and personal ruminations that ADOBE LA published in 1998. The finding aid can be found on the Online Archive of California.

New Getty Marrow intern

Cira Sandoval is the recipient of the 2019 Getty Marrow Multicultural Undergraduate Internship position at the CSRC. Cira received her bachelor’s degree in May from Cal State Long Beach, where she majored in arts and anthropology and minored in Spanish. Her past work experience includes archaeological fieldwork, educational programming and curatorial assistance, and documenting Native American collections to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Her summer internship at the CSRC will include working with the CSRC arts archives as cultural heritage artifacts, helping preserve materials, and helping to provide better access to CSRC arts collections. Welcome, Cira!

CSRC lends Gomez works to exhibition

The exhibition On Their Backs: Latinx Labor in the US, curated by Erika Hiragumi, independent curator and incoming graduate student in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, will feature artworks by Los Angeles–based artist Ramiro Gomez. The artworks were lent by the CSRC. The exhibition opens July 13 at the Fellows of Contemporary Art gallery in Chinatown and will be on view through September 6. For more information, visit the exhibition website.

Sonidos de la Frontera exhibition continues

Sonidos de la Frontera: Music across Borders and Time, currently on view at the UCLA Music Library, highlights the Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings, the world’s largest repository of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican American musical recordings. The exhibition provides a gateway to the collection by using a fraction of the music in combination with material from more than a dozen of the CSRC’s archival collections to present significant moments in Mexican and Mexican American music history. Curated chiefly by CSRC archives specialist Doug Johnson, in collaboration with CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores and music inquiry and research librarian Matthew Vest, the exhibition includes photographs, posters, clippings, pamphlets, flyers, songbooks, and audio recordings in a variety of formats. CSRC collections represented in the exhibition include the Humberto Cané Papers, the Pedro J. Gonzalez Papers, and the Anthony Beltramo Collection. The exhibition, which is a collaboration between the Music and CSRC Libraries, will be on view outside the Music Library Reading Room at the Schoenberg Music Building through summer 2019. The Music Library is open seven days a week during regular session. For hours, click here. An online version of Sonidos de la Frontera: Music across Borders and Time, featuring images of artifacts and links to recordings, is now available as a UCLA Library Research Guide. The recordings in the Frontera Collection are available to the public through the University of California’s Digital Library Program.

Exhibitions with CSRC loans

The following off-campus exhibitions opening this month or currently on view include images and artworks from CSRC collections and publications:

*Exhibition catalog available in the CSRC Library

To schedule a tour of the CSRC Library, contact CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores at floresx@ucla.edu or fill out the form on the CSRC Library Services page.

CSRC PRESS

c, 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:

Essays

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.

Dossiers

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.

Book Reviews

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.