CSRC Newsletter - May 2008

Volume 6, Number 8

Director's Message

On April 28, 2008, the UCLA Library and Information Studies Alumni Association posthumously recognized former CSRC Librarian Yolanda Retter Vargas with its Distinguished Alumni Award. This award would have meant a lot to her, and it means a lot to those of us at UCLA who worked with her. It has been eight months since she died, and her loss is still felt. But you know, Yolanda would have been the first person to say that the only way she could ever be awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award was posthumously…because she never stopped being a student. The award is a tribute not only to her professional achievements (and there were many) but also to her spirit as a lifelong student. Her degrees included a BA (1971), an MLS (1983), an MSW (1987), and a PhD (1999). She also earned her A & P License from the Federal Aviation Administration in 1981! Yolanda became the librarian at the CSRC in 2003. She brought a lifetime of experience, as a librarian and as someone deeply committed to the hard work of social change. Yolanda turned the CSRC Library into a dynamic site that was always filled with students and scholars from around the world. In her four years at the center, she doubled the number of collections and users, and she increased student participation 400 percent. Then she went back to school, again, earning her post-graduate Archival Certificate. To all the students who worked with Yolanda, and who will be graduating this June, Yolanda would no doubt have said, “¡Felicidades! And now your learning really begins.” Don’t let it ever stop. Our world needs more lifelong students.
 
Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

News

Carlos Haro in AARP Publication
AARP The Magazine quotes Carlos Haro, our scholar in residence, in “1968: the Year That Rocked Our World,” an article on the profound effects of the year 1968. Dr. Haro’s contribution is a reflection on the beginnings of the Chicano student movement. The article is available at the AARP website.
 

Events

Documentary Screening
El Mexico mas Cercano a Japon/The Closest Mexico to Japan, a documentary film about the Japanese community of Tijuana, Mexico, will be shown on Thursday, May 8, 5:30–7:30 p.m., in the Presentation Room (room 11348) at the UCLA Charles Young Research Library. The film covers the history of this community before and after World War II, when Tijuana’s Japanese were forced to relocate to Mexico’s interior. The film includes images taken by José Genaro Kingo Nonaka, Tijuana’s first official photographer, between 1924 and 1942. The screening is co-sponsored by the CSRC; the Asian American Studies Center and Department; the George and Sakaye Aratani Endowed Chair on the Japanese American Internment, Redress, and Community; the Charles Young Research Library; the Asian American Graduate Student Association; and the Nikkei Student Union. The event is free and open to the public, and no RSVP is necessary. Parking is available for $8.00 in Lot 5. More information about the film is available on the San Diego Union-Tribune’s website.
 
Women and East L.A. Punk
Colin Gunckel, CSRC arts project coordinator, will co-curate a multimedia exhibition at the Claremont Museum of Art. The exhibition, Vexing: Female Voices from East L.A. Punk, opens on Sunday, May 18, and runs through the end of August. It surveys the burgeoning punk rock scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s in East Los Angeles. A historical investigation of the women who were at the forefront of this movement, Vexing explores their lasting legacies and contemporary practices. The title of the exhibition is taken from The Vex, a club housed at Self Help Graphics and Art that became a home for Eastside bands. The documentary-style exhibition includes photo, video and audio archives, as well as studio work encompassing painting, installation, writings, and performances. The museum will host an opening reception on Saturday, May 17, with live performances by several artists featured in the exhibition. For more information visit the museum’s website.
 
Presentation by Laura Aguilar
In conjunction with UCLA Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s “Chicana Lesbian Literature” class, Chicana photographer Laura Aguilar will screen her video Untouched Landscape and discuss the use of body, memory, and landscape in her work. Her talk will be on Tuesday, May 20, 3:00–4:00 p.m., in the CSRC Library (144 Haines Hall). The screening is co-sponsored by the CSRC, the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, the Department of Women’s Studies, and the Center for the Study of Women.
 
Latina/o Education Summit
The theme for the CSRC’s third education summit is “K-12 Education: What Can School Board Members and School Superintendents Do to Assure Student Success?” The summit brings together school board members and school superintendents from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the Montebello Unified School District (MUSD), which have the largest enrollments of Latino students in the country, and the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which provides services to the county’s eighty school districts. These policy makers will identify and explore factors at the primary and secondary levels that are critical if Latina/o students are to make successful transitions through the education pipeline. The summit will take place Friday, May 23, at the UCLA Faculty Center, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. To register please visit the education summit website. No registration fee is required.
 
Presentation of Generations of Exclusion
The CSRC is proud to host UCLA sociologists Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz, who will present and sign their new book, Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race, at a reception on Thursday, May 29, 3:00–5:00 p.m., at the UCLA Faculty Center’s Hacienda Room. The much-anticipated Generations of Exclusion is the most comprehensive scholarly analysis yet on the economic, educational, linguistic, social, and political status of Mexican Americans. The groundbreaking study surveys four generations of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio. The authors’ extraordinary work was prompted by the discovery of boxes of original files at UCLA from a 1965 survey of Mexican Americans titled “The Mexican American Study Project.” Most of the respondents of the 1965 study were re-interviewed, as were their children, who are now adults. Generations of Exclusion is the first major survey to systematically examine changes in long-term intra- and inter-generational socioeconomic status and ethnic identity within any ethnic group. Parking is available for $8.00 in Lot 2, located just south of the Faculty Center. Visitors should enter the UCLA campus at Hilgard Ave. and Westholme Blvd. and proceed to the parking kiosk.
 

CSRC Library and Archive

Service Learning for Graduate Students
For the past few years, the CSRC has participated as a service learning site for graduate students in the UCLA Department of Information Studies. This opportunity presents itself every spring quarter as part of the coursework required for the “Ethics, Diversity, and Change in Information Professions” class. Participating students are given the opportunity to implement knowledge obtained through course materials in real life settings, which allows them to develop a richer understanding of the ethical issues that arise when providing service and access to a repository’s patrons. Repositories may include libraries, archives, or museums. Students working in the CSRC Library are exposed to the complexities of working in an ethnic studies library and archive. This quarter, service learning students will assist with the processing of archival collections.
 
Middle School Students Visit
On Friday, April 4, thirty-five middle school students and their teacher, Ismael Ortiz, from Carnegie Junior High School made an unannounced visit to the CSRC Library. Librarian Miguel Juárez spotted the students wandering around campus after their host cancelled on them and invited them to visit the library. Archivist Lizette Guerra presented students with a history of the library and its special collections. Students asked to read a letter from one of the collections, Homeboy Industries Papers. Founded by Father Boyle in 1992, Homeboy Industries creates businesses that provide training, work experience, and, above all, the opportunity for rival gang members to work side by side. After the visit, Judith Gallardo and Salvador Mesinas, two of the library’s student assistants, took the middle school students on a tour of the UCLA campus. More information about the Homeboy Industries Papers is available at the CSRC Library website.
 
The Manazar Gamboa Collection
The CSRC Library has acquired a collection of papers and materials from the late Los Angeles writer and former director of Beyond Baroque, Manuel “Manazar” Gamboa, who died December 13, 2000. The collection was donated by Michelle Kholos Brooks. Manazar Gamboa was an important Los Angeles poet who wrote about the Chicano urban experience. Gamboa influenced a whole generation of L.A. writers, including Luis J. Rodriguez, Gloria E. Alvarez, and Tina Demirdjian.
 
Spring Comes to the CSRC Archive!
The finding aids for several collections have been uploaded to the OAC and will be available online in early May. These collections of papers are from photographer Laura Aguilar; artist and arts educator Francesco X. Siqueiros; the Center Theatre Group’s Latino Theater Initiative; educator and historian Richard Griswold Del Castillo; educator, dramaturge, and scholar Tomás Benitez; and educator and scholar Paula Cruz Takash. Also completed is the finding aid for the papers and photographs of José Luis Sedano.
Later this month the finding aid for the library’s collection of press clippings for Revelaciones/Revelations: Hispanic Art of Evanescence will be available. Revelaciones, an exhibition of Latino art at Cornell University in 1993, comprised eight site-specific installations. The exhibition was curated by Chon A. Noriega and José Piedra. Revelaciones was sponsored by the Hispanic American Studies Program at Cornell University and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.
 
Preservation is underway on three collections. The Church of the Epiphany Civil Rights Archive is a treasure trove of information for scholars interested in César Chávez and the Brown Beret Movement. The Robert Gutiérrez Arts Collection and the Isaac Artenstein Papers are both excellent resources for scholars and researchers interested in Chicano film.
 

CSRC Press

Policy Briefs Assess Mexican American Assimilation
CSRC Press announces two new policy briefs, both drawn from Generations of Exclusion by Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz. The two new briefs are the first in a series of five that explores Mexican American assimilation. The policy briefs are available at the CSRC Press website.
 
Mexican Americans and Ethnic and Political Identities, CSRC Latino Policy and Issues Brief No. 17, concludes that Mexican Americans are part of an ethnic political community with a distinct ethnic and political sensibility.
 
Mexican Americans and Economic Progress, CSRC Latino Policy and Issues Brief No. 18, reveals that occupations, earnings, home ownership, and overall wealth have not increased for later generations of Mexican Americans.
 
The briefs were generated by the Mexican American Study Project (MASP), a longitudinal and intergenerational research project based at UCLA. In 1965–66, MASP project teams interviewed Mexican Americans living in Los Angeles and San Antonio; in 1997–2000, Professors Telles and Ortiz re-interviewed the original participants, plus two of their adult children. The two surveys provide data for a systematic analysis of how well Mexican Americans are being absorbed into the predominant culture.
 
Other measures of assimilation—including education, language, religion, family values, intermarriage, and residential segregation—are explored in CSRC Policy and Issues Briefs Nos. 19–21, which will be released in June and July. For more information on these and other CSRC publications, visit the CSRC Press website.
 

Opportunities

Internships with LA Plaza
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes and the CSRS are offering two paid, ten-week internships this summer.
 
The curatorial internship will be awarded to a motivated student who is interested in Latino and Latin American art, culture, and history. The internship is intended for students of African American, Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander descent—ethnicities that are underrepresented in the professions related to museums and the visual arts. Candidates may be from any area of undergraduate study and are not required to have demonstrated a previous commitment to the visual arts. Deadline to apply is Friday, May 9. For more information contact Michael Hudson-Medina at mmedina@lapca.org.
 
The capital campaigns and marketing internship will focus on developing the public launch of a capital campaign for LA Plaza. The intern will work with LA Plaza’s staff on the fundraising plan and marketing activities. The intern will help the organization prepare for a key board meeting in which the goals and activities of the capital campaign will be presented, discussed, and evaluated. The application deadline is Thursday, May 15. For more information contact Erick Serrato at eserrato@lapca.org.
 

Contacts

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center • 193 Haines Hall • Box 951544 • Los Angeles, CA 90095-1544 Campus Mail Code: 154403 • Tel: (310) 825-2363 • Fax: (310) 206-1784
 

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