CSRC Newsletter September - October 2008

Volume 7, Number 1

Director's Message

“Be right, be wrong, but be definite.” I have been reminded of this phrase as I have watched the presidential campaign unfold over the last few weeks. When I was growing up in the 1960s, our family would often drive across the country on vacation. One summer, my father drafted me as the navigator. Coming up to an exchange on the interstate, we had to go either left or right. Which way? he asked. I was only about eight years old, and I wasn’t even sure which way to hold the map, which unfolded to about my size. As we got closer to the exchange, he demanded, “Be right, be wrong, but be definite.” “Go right,” I asserted. A few miles later, we all realized it had been the wrong choice. My father was angry with me. In my defense I explained that I had been definite. “But I want you to be right, too,” he answered. I think in all the areas that are important to our nation, we want a leader who is definite, but we also want this person to be right. Who you select as your navigator says a lot about where you might end up down the road.
 
Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

News

CSRC Assistant Director Joins Latino Residence Board
We are proud to announce that Javier Iribarren, CSRC’s assistant director, has joined the board of directors for the Chicano/Latino residential hall theme community for the 2008–09 academic year. UCLA’s Office of Residential Life has established the theme community program to create a supportive living environment in campus dormitories and to stimulate networking among incoming freshmen. Dr. Iribarren hopes to contribute to the program’s goals by facilitating Latina/o students’ access to information and guidance and by developing ideas for relevant activities and programming that will be implemented in campus housing.
 
Grant Awarded for Research on Hate Speech
The CSRC and the National Hispanic Media Coalition, one of the center’s community partners, have been awarded a grant by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) for a pilot study on the occurrence of hate speech in the media. The goal of the project is to develop quantitative methodologies for analyzing hate speech on commercial talk radio. CSRC Director Chon A. Noriega and CSRC Assistant Director Javier Iribarren are the principal investigators and Professor Otto Santa Ana is a consultant for this groundbreaking project. Funding is provided by the Ford Foundation’s Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom Program.
 
CSRC Welcomes New Staff
The CSRC is pleased to announce the appointment of four new employees. We are glad to have them on our team, and we look forward to fostering long and collaborative working relationships. Welcome aboard!
 
Christopher Best is the CSRC’s first full-time director of development. He joins the center with over eight years of development experience. He spent the last four years at California State University, Los Angeles, as director of development for the College of Arts and Letters. Prior to that he helped coordinate employee-giving campaigns while working with United Way of Greater Los Angeles. He earned a master’s degree in literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in music from Indiana University.
 
Lizette Guerra has been appointed acting librarian for the CSRC Library. Ms. Guerra received her bachelor’s degree from UCLA in 2002 in anthropology and Chicana/o studies. She has a master’s degree in Latin American studies and a master’s degree in library and information science from the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Ms. Guerra has done archival, curatorial, and cataloging work for the Autry National Center’s Southwest Museum of the American Indian and the Museum of the American West.
 
Darling Sianez is the administrative assistant for the CSRC Press. She has over ten years of experience in customer service, marketing, and fulfillment. Before returning to school to upgrade her computer skills, she worked for a company where her responsibilities included processing financial transactions.
 
Crystal Perez is the new administrative assistant to Chon A. Noriega and Javier Iribarren. Ms. Perez, who worked at CSRC for four years as a student worker, is well acquainted with the CSRC’s mission, organization, and affiliates. Her new position will draw on her computer, administrative, and organizational skills. A member of the UCLA class of 2008, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and Chicana/o studies through the College Honors Program.
 
Closing Celebration for Vexing
The Claremont Museum of Art celebrated the closing of Vexing: Female Voices of East L.A. Punk, an exhibition co-curated by CSRC Arts Projects Coordinator Colin Gunckel, with performances by emerging L.A. bands Go Betty Go and The Sirens. Eddie Ayala (of Los Illegals and Odd Squad) and Willie Herrón (of Los Illegals) made a surprise appearance. The exhibition, which closed August 31, presented a historical investigation of the women who were at the forefront of the burgeoning East L.A. punk rock scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Presentation by Former Assistant Director

Carlos M. Haro, former CSRC assistant director and present postdoctoral scholar-in-residence, was a featured speaker at the second annual Los Angeles Institute, hosted by the Chicano Latino Youth Leadership Project (CLYLP). Forty high-school students from the Los Angeles area participated in the symposium, which took place at UCLA on August 15–17. The students stayed in UCLA dormitories and attended presentations on community, history and culture, and college admissions and careers. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Latino/Chicano education, Dr. Haro gave a talk that focused on Chicano educational history, particularly in regard to Mendez v. Westminster, a 1947 federal court case that challenged racial segregation in California’s public schools.
 
CSRC Film Screened at Festival
Casa Libre/Freedom House, a documentary directed by Roberto Oregel, produced by Chon Noriega, and co-produced by Peter Schey, was invited to participate in the 14th Annual Temecula Valley International Film Festival on September 18–19. The CSRC will host a screening of the film on October 30 (see Events for a description of the film and details about this exciting event).
 
Exhibitions at LACMA
Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement, co-curated by CSRC Director Chon A. Noriega, closed on September 1 after a successful run that drew some 70,000 visitors. The show was the first comprehensive consideration of Chicano art in almost two decades and the largest exhibition of cutting-edge Chicano art ever presented at LACMA. Dr. Noriega’s co-curators are Rita Gonzalez and Howard N. Fox. The exhibition will open at the Tamayo Museum in Mexico City on October 16. To learn more, visit the museum’s website.
Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections from the Cheech Marin Collection continues at the museum through November 2. Part of the CSRC-LACMA Latino Arts Initiative, this exhibition showcases nearly fifty paintings by Los Angeles–based artists represented in Mr. Marin's noted collection of Chicano art. Well known for his work in movies and stand-up comedy, Mr. Marin has assembled one of the largest private collections of Chicano art in the country. For more information visit the museum’s website.
Selections from the CSRC’s “The Arhoolie Foundation’s Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings” are incorporated into LACMA’s new installation of works from its permanent collection of Latin American art. The recordings can be heard in the Latin American modernism gallery. The Frontera Collection is supported by the Los Tigres del Norte Fund; visit the CSRC website for more information about this and other collections in the CSRC Library. Information about LACMA’s Latin American art collection is available on the museum’s website.
 

Events

Preview of Award-Winning Film
The CSRC, in co-sponsorship with UCLA’s Melnitz Movies, is proud to present a preview screening of Chris Eska’s August Evening on Thursday, September 25, 7:30 p.m., in the James Bridges Theater (Melnitz 1409) on the UCLA campus. Winner of Best Dramatic Feature and Best Performance at the 2007 LA Film Festival, August Evening follows an undocumented Mexican farm worker and his daughter-in-law as their lives are thrown into upheaval. Eska is a recent graduate of the UCLA MFA program and will be on hand for a Q&A with CSRC Director Noriega after the screening. The film, which is distributed by Maya Entertainment, opens in Los Angeles on September 26. This event is free and open to the public, but tickets are limited; they can be picked up at the theater box office one hour prior to the screening. Parking in Lot 3, which is just north of Melnitz Hall, can be purchased for $9 at the kiosk located at Wyton Dr. and Hilgard Ave. For further information visit the website for Melnitz Movies.
 
Lectures in Migration Study Group Series
Rafaela Dancygier, assistant professor of politics at Princeton University, will give a presentation titled “Immigration and Conflict” on Friday, September 26, 12:00 p.m., in 279 Haines Hall. The talk, sponsored by The Migration Study Group and the International Institute, with support from the CSRC, is part of a winter seminar series that focuses on children and families in migration processes. Speakers in October are: Michel Wieviorka (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris), on Monday, October 6, 236 Royce; Katharine Donato (Vanderbilt University) on Friday, October 10, 279 Haines; and Muzaffar Chishti (Migration Policy Institute and NYU Law School) on Friday, October 24, 279 Haines. All talks begin at noon.
 
Lecture by Eloy Rodriguez
The UCLA Civil Rights Project and the CSRC are pleased to host Eloy Rodriguez, who will give a presentation titled “Human Imaginations and Culturally Formed Science: Drastic Reconstruction of the Science Educational Pipeline” on Wednesday, October 1, 1:30 p.m., in Moore Hall's Third Floor Reading Room (3340). Dr. Rodriguez, the James A. Perkins Endowed Professor of Biology at Cornell University, is a chemical biologist with a special interest in natural biomedicines, health, and ecology. He established the nationally recognized KIDS (Kids Investigating and Discovering Science) program, which is funded by NIH, Honda, and the Hughes and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundations. His talk, written for a diverse audience, will address how to increase the representation of minority students in the nation's science education pipeline. Light refreshments will be served. Parking is available in Lot 2 and can be purchased for $9 at the kiosk located at Westholme Ave. and Hilgard Ave.
 
Día de los Muertos Lecture
Tere Romo, CSRC arts project coordinator, will present “Transforming Spirit: Contemporary Expressions of Día de los Muertos” at the Ventura County Museum of Art on Saturday, October 4, at 2:00 p.m. She will discuss Día de los Muertos as observed in Mexico and its introduction into the United States as part of the Chicano Movement. Her lecture will be given in conjunction with Entre Cielo y Tierra/Between Heaven and Earth, a group exhibition of contemporary Day of the Dead altars. For more information see the museum’s website.
 
Fowler Museum Exhibit
The CSRC is supporting efforts in relation to the UCLA Fowler Museum’s upcoming exhibition Caras vemos, corazones no sabemos/Faces Seen, Hearts Unknown: The Human Landscape of Mexican Migration. This bilingual exhibition opens on Sunday, October 5, and runs through Sunday, December 28. Caras vemos explores the migratory experience through paintings, works on paper, photographs, video, and installations by more than forty Chicano and Mexican artists, including Maria Elena Castro, Gronk, Salomón Huerta, Magú, Delilah Montoya, Malaquías Montoya, and Patssi Valdéz. For further information about this exhibition and the Fowler Museum, visit the museum’s website.
 
CSRC Librarian at Joto Caucus Conference
Lizette Guerra, CSRC acting librarian, will discuss the CSRC’s Mujeres and LGBTIQ Archives Initiative at a session during the 2nd Annual Joto Caucus Conference on Friday, October 10, 2:00 p.m., at Cal State L.A. Participants in this session will examine the need for libraries and archives to collect and preserve the cultural record of the Latino/a LGBTIQ community. The CSRC initiative receives funding from the Ford Foundation. The CSRC is a co-sponsor of the Joto Caucus Conference. For information about the conference visit the NACCS website.
 
Fiesta de Inspiración
The UCLA Latino Alumni Association will host the 17th Annual Fiesta de Inspiración on Thursday, October 16, 6:00 p.m., at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Geoffrey L. Rivas will be honored as the 2008 alumnus of the year at the awards and scholarship banquet. Mr. Rivas, who received his MFA in 1985, is a prominent Latino actor, producer, and founding member of the New Latino Theater Company. This year’s Padrinos Award recipients are Herbert Siguenza, Ric Salinas, and Richard Montoya, members of the comedy group Culture Clash, and the Madrina Award recipient is renowned journalist and anchorwoman Nancy Agosto. To learn more, visit the association’s website.
 
Special Screening of Casa Libre/Freedom House
Save the date for a special screening of Casa Libre/Freedom House, a documentary about a unique homeless shelter for unaccompanied, undocumented minors in Los Angeles. The film will screen on Thursday, October 30, 7:30 p.m., at the historic Los Angeles Athletic Club (LAAC). Directed by UCLA film student Roberto Oregel and produced by Chon A. Noriega, Casa Libre/Freedom House is an outgrowth of a community partnership between the CSRC and the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Inc (CHRCL), which runs Casa Libre. Casa Libre/Freedom House is co-produced by Peter Schey, president and executive director of CHRCL. The project received support from the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships. The screening will be preceded by a reception at 6:00 p.m. and followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and invited guests. The CSRC will send out an announcement with ticket information in early October.
 
Save the Date
The CSRC’s annual Open House will be held on Wednesday, November 5, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. in Haines Hall 144. We hope to see you there.
 

CSRC Library and Archive

News

Progress was made this summer in implementing the Archivist’s Toolkit, software that will support accessioning and describing archival materials. Processing of The Isaac Artenstein Papers will be completed by the end of the month; this collection will be of particular interest to anyone researching the life of Pedro J. Gonzalez, whom Mr. Artenstein documented in his film Break of Dawn.
 
Collection Donor Recognized
Congratulations to San Francisco artist Ester Hernandez, one of five women who will receive the Women’s Caucus for Art’s annual Lifetime Achievement Award for distinguished achievement in visual-arts professions. A pioneer in the Chicana/Chicano civil rights art movement, Ms. Hernandez’s work continues to reflect her commitment to political action. The CSRC Archive was honored to receive a collection of fine arts prints from Ms. Hernandez in 2006. The Women's Caucus for Art, founded in 1972, is a national organization affiliated with the College Art Association (CAA). This year’s awards ceremony will be held at the Wilshire Grand Hotel, 930 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, on Saturday, February 28, 2009, in conjunction with CAA’s 2009 Annual Conference. For more information visit the organization’s website.
 
Edward R. Roybal Photograph Collection
The CSRC is proud to announce that it has received the Edward R. Roybal Collection of photographs and personal papers. Congressman Roybal, the first Latino elected to the Los Angeles City Council, represents a part of Chicano history that is often overlooked: the WWII generation of Chicanos whose civic service helped transform public policy aimed at empowering disadvantaged communities. This archival collection will complement existing research collections at the University Library at California State University, Los Angeles, and the UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections. The photographic material, which consists of approximately fifty linear feet, documents Congressman Roybal’s time in public office and his family’s history. The CSRC will be processing the collection and making a portion of the images available to researchers via UCLA’s Digital Library, work being supported by a grant from the Haynes Foundation. Watch for announcements in future newsletters as the collection becomes available online.
 
Dionicio Morales Papers
The CSRC has acquired the papers of Dionicio Morales, founder of the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation (MAOF). The CSRC is collaborating with the UCLA Center for Oral History Research to compile a life narrative that will complement the archival holdings. Born in 1917, Mr. Morales began his social work as a voice for the braceros. After gaining the attention of Vice President Lyndon Johnson, the MAOF became a leader in fostering social programs, improving education, and providing civic education for the Mexican American community. The MAOF is now celebrating its forty-first anniversary. The acquisition consists of approximately sixty linear feet of Mr. Morales’s papers, photos, videos, clippings, and many other papers relating to his life and work.
 

CSRC Press

Fall Issue of Aztlán Now Available
The Fall 2008 issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies has been mailed to subscribers. This issue opens with a consideration of Laura Aguilar’s photography by Aztlán’s editor, Chon A. Noriega. Leading off the essay section is a conversation between Fiamma Montezemolo and leading anthropologist Renato Rosaldo, who has re-theorized the place of Chicano culture within his discipline. Juanita Heredia looks at Denise Chávez's Loving Pedro Infante, and Irene Lara explores the iconography of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Debate and protest triggered by the installation of statues of colonial governor Don Juan de Oñate provides the subject for separate essays by Michael L. Trujillo and by Frank G. Pérez and Carlos F. Ortega. Nicholas De Genova rounds out the essays with a review of his research on racialized discourses about urban space. The Dossier section, which is curated by Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta, features three pieces on corridos by the late Guillermo E. Hernández. Judithe Hernández, our cover artist, presents several recent works and talks about her evolution as a Chicana artist. To subscribe to Aztlán, or to order a single issue, visit the CSRC Press website.
 
Upcoming DVD Releases
Two new DVDs in the CSRC’s Chicano Cinema and Media Art Series are nearing their release dates. Casa Libre/Freedom House, a documentary directed by UCLA film school graduate Roberto Oregel, will be released in September. The film presents the life stories of several young men who find shelter and a community at Casa Libre/Freedom House, an organization that assists unaccompanied and undocumented immigrant minors in Los Angeles. The CSRC will present a special screening of Casa Libre/Freedom House in October; see Upcoming Events for information. Laura Aguilar: Life, the Body, Her Perspective will be released in October. This long-awaited DVD, which was produced by CSRC Archivist Michael Stone, contains over three hours of material. The disk includes the artist’s four testimonios (personal video essays), a lecture she gave at UCLA, and a series of slideshows drawn from her extensive oeuvre. More information about the Chicano Cinema and Media Art Series is available at the CSRC website. DVDs in the series can be purchased from the CSRC’s online store.
 
New Findings from the Latinos & Social Security Project
Even though Latinos comprise 10 percent of the baby boom generation and an increasing percentage of the U.S. population, little is know about this important demographic group. Zachary D. Gassoumis, Kathleen H. Wilber, and Fernando Torres-Gil examine the characteristics of Latino baby boomers in two new publications from CSRC Press and the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging: Latino Baby Boomers: A Hidden Population (Latinos & Social Security Policy Brief No. 3) and Who Are the Latino Baby Boomers? Examining the Demographic and Economic Characteristics of a Hidden Population (Latinos & Social Security Research Report No. 3). The brief highlights the authors’ findings; the longer report presents their findings in depth. Both documents are available in PDF at the CSRC Press website.
 
CSRC Fellows, Visiting Scholars, and Associates
Appointments for 2008–09
The CSRC supports a postdoctoral fellows and a visiting scholars program that attracts scholars from institutions throughout the country and researchers from abroad. The CSRC also supports a predoctoral/graduate fellowship program and a graduate associates program for UCLA graduate students who focus on scholarly research in Chicano and multicultural studies. Information on the Institute of American Cultures Postdoctoral/Visiting Scholar Fellowship and Predoctoral/Graduate Fellowship program is posted at the IAC website.
 
Institute of America Cultures (IAC) Visiting Scholar
Deena González is professor and chair of Chicana/o studies at Loyola Marymount. Dr. González received her M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Berkley in history with a specialization in nineteenth-century U.S. history.
 
Other Visiting Scholars
C. Ondine Chavoya is an associate professor of art history and Chicana/o studies at Williams College.
Cristina Carotenuto is a doctoral student with an M.A. in language science from the Università Ca'Foscari, Venice, Italy.
Michael Chirdarelli is a doctoral student with an M.A. in history, criticism and theory of cinema and audiovisual arts from the Università degli studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy.
Robb Hernandez is a doctoral student in American studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
 
Institute of American Studies—Chicano Studies Predoctoral/Graduate Fellow
Argelia Edith Andrade is a doctoral student in Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA, with a specialization in linguistics.
 

CSRC Research Projects

Grants for 2008–09
As one of the members of the Institute of American Cultures (IAC), the CSRC participates in the annual IAC-CSRC research grant and fellowship program. The IAC is responsible for strengthening and coordinating interdisciplinary research and instruction in ethnic studies, with special attention to the four UCLA Ethnic Studies Research Centers, including the CSRC. UCLA faculty, research staff, and graduate students may apply for the IAC-CSRC grants, which fund research projects at the campus level. Faculty and staff projects are funded at not more than $7,000, and graduate student projects at no more than $3,000. The deadline for applications is normally the end of April of each year. Detailed information on the IAC Grants Program is posted at IAC website.

Faculty Grants
Maylei Blackwell
Chicana/o Studies
Project: Líderes Campesinas: Transnational Migrant Organizing Strategies

A.P. Gonzalez
Film, Television, and Digital Media
Project: El Béisbol: The Story of Latinos in Baseball

Ruth Milkman
Sociology
Project: Low Wage Workers and Labor Law Violations in Los Angeles

Pamela Munro
Linguistics
Project: A New Dictionary of Valley Zapotec

Student Grants
Milo Alvarez, Ph.D. student
History
Project: On the Shoulders of Generation: The Brown Berets of Aztlan in the Long Civil Rights Era

Lauren Nicole Mason, Ph.D. student
Applied Linguistics
Project: Protecting and Serving Outcast Communities: Chicana/o Performance and Performativity in Chicano Secret Service Teatro

Betina Yanez, Ph.D. student
Clinical Psychology
Project: Understanding the Breast Cancer Experience in Ethnically Diverse Women: A Predictive Model

 

CSRC Latino Research Program Grants

Grants for 2008–09
The CSRC administers the UCLA Latino Research Program, which provides research grants for the promotion of policy-relevant research on Chicano and Latino issues in California. Funding for the Latino Research Program comes from the University of California Committee on Latino Research (UCCLR). Grants provide research support for UCLA faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students. Research proposals are submitted through the Institute of American Cultures (IAC) Research Grant Program—a campuswide research program. For more information, and to obtain an online IAC grant application, visit the IAC website.
 
Faculty Grants
Maylei Blackwell
Chicana/o Studies
Project: Líderes Campesinas: Transnational Migrant Organizing Strategies
 
Vilma Ortiz
Sociology
Project: Homeownership and Wealth among Mexican Americans
 
Student Grants
Ofelia Huidor, Ph.D. student
Education
Project: Riding the Yellow Bus in a Post-Brown Era: Experiences of Mexican-Origin Students in a Racially Integrated Suburban School Setting
 
Maria C. Malagon, Ph.D. student
Education
Project: Trenches under the Pipeline: Understanding the Chicano Male Continuation High School Experience
 
Lindsay Perez-Huber, Ph.D. student
Education
Project: Sueños Indocumentados: The Educational Experiences of Undocumented Chicanas in California Higher Education
 

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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