CSRC Newsletter - December 2020

As we sadly reported earlier this month, Juan Gómez-Quiñones, UCLA professor emeritus of history, activist, and co-founder of the CSRC and Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, passed away on November 11. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega wrote a tribute to the former CSRC director that can be read on the CSRC website. Many readers have sent us their own remembrances of Gómez-Quiñones, which we are compiling for public viewing on our site. We continue to welcome your submissions. Please email them to csrcinfo@chicano.ucla.edu. See In the News (below) for additional coverage of Gómez-Quiñones’s passing.

 

David Hayes-Bautista, distinguished professor of medicine, former CSRC director, and current director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture, has been researching the impact of COVID-19 on Latinos since the beginning of the pandemic. He and his collaborators are publishing reports on their findings on the UCLA Health website. All reports are available as PDF downloads. The most recent report, “COVID-19: Who Can Afford to Pay the Costs of Care?,” examines issues pertaining to essential workers who cannot afford health insurance or care.

 

Jennifer Osorio, head of the International and Areas Studies Department at the UCLA Library and CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee member, has been appointed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to the position of visiting program officer on the ARL’s Academy Leadership Research Project Task Force. Osorio will support the task force in its examination of the roles and goals of research library leaders. Her appointment is from October 2020 through May 2021.

 

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, independent curator and a 2020-21CSRC visiting research scholar, has been awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writer Grant to assist her completion of the article “Patssi Valdez: ‘I dare you question me,’ A Radical Photographic Portraiture.” Fajardo-Hill is one of twenty-two writers who received grants from the program this year. She has conducted research for the article at the CSRC.

 

Sonja Diaz, director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI), a CSRC partner, was quoted in “One Seat, Competing Pressures as Newsom Considers Senate Pick,” published November 29 in The New York Times. Diaz is advocating for a Latina/o to be appointed to the US Senate seat previously belonging to US vice president-elect Kamala Harris.

 

Maurice Rafael Magaña, assistant professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies and the Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Graduate Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Arizona has published Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico (University of California Press, 2020). Magaña was the 2013-14 CSRC IAC visiting scholar and a CSRC visiting researcher. While in residence at the CSRC, he worked on the manuscript and conducted research using CSRC collections.

 

César J. Ayala, professor of sociology and CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee member, has published Agrarian Puerto Rico: Reconsidering Rural Economy and Society, 1899-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Ayala co-authored the book with Laird W. Bergad, director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at CUNY Graduate Center and a distinguished professor of history at CUNY’s Lehman College.   

 

José Loya, assistant professor of urban planning and CSRC faculty associate, published the article “The Great Recession and Ethno-Racial Disparities in Access to Mortgage Credit” in Social Problems in November Loya co-authored the article with Chenoa Flippen, associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Cecilia Menjívar, professor of sociology and CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee member, published the article “The Contradictions of Liminal Legality: Economic Attainment and Civic Engagement of Central American Immigrants on Temporary Protected Status” in Social Problems in November. Menjívar co-authored the article with Victor Agadjanian and Byeongdon Oh.

 

The award-winning book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965  by Kelly Lytle Hernández, professor and Thomas E. Lifka Chair in History and former CSRC associate director, is now available as an audiobook through Tantor Media. The cover of the book and audiobook features an image of Mexican men incarcerated in the Los Angeles county jail in the early 1930s; the photograph is from the The Pedro J. González Papers (1915–1978) at the CSRC.

 

CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was quoted in a UCLA Newsroom story about the failure of Proposition 16 ballot measure in the November 3 election.

UCLA Newsroom, November 18, 2020 (PDF) (URL)

 

The UCLA Department of History posted a memorial tribute to Juan Gómez-Quiñones and noted, among his accomplishments, his role as co-founder of the CSRC and former CSRC director. The post also links to the tribute written by current CSRC director Chon A. Noriega.

UCLA Department of History, November 17, 2020 (PDF) (URL)

 

In a column for the Los Angeles Times, Gustavo Arellano reflected on the passing of Chicana/o studies and history professor Juan Gómez-Quiñones, from whom Arellano took classes while a student at UCLA.  The story includes an image of Gómez-Quiñones from the CSRC.

Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2020 (PDF) (URL)

 

Alvaro Huerta, assistant professor of urban and regional planning and ethnic and women’s studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and former CSRC visiting scholar, reflected on the passing of Chicana/o studies and history scholar, educator, and activist Juan Gómez-Quiñones. Huerta notes Gómez-Quiñones's role in co-founding the CSRC and Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies.

CounterPunch, November 16, 2020 (PDF) (URL)

 

As part of their Southland Sessions programming, KCET posted a summary and link to the video recording of the October 19 online event “10 Questions: Reckoning - What Is Power?” CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was among the panelists. The video can be viewed here.

KCET, November 10, 2020 (PDF) (URL)

 

Alejandro Anreus, professor of art at William Paterson University and author of Luis Cruz Azaceta, volume 10 in the A Ver series from CSRC Press, published a memorial tribute to scholar and curator Juan A. Martínez, who passed away October 11. Martínez is the author of María Brito, volume 4 in the A Ver series. Anreus discussed the release of Martínez’s book at an El Museo del Barrio event in 2011.

Diario de Cuba, November 9, 2020 (PDF) (URL)

 

As part of its program series “187: The Rise of the Latino Vote,” which features firsthand accounts of the campaign against Proposition 187, KCET published a video-recorded interview with CSRC director Chon A. Noriega. Noriega discusses artmaking in response to anti-immigrant sentiment in the early 1990s. The video can be viewed here.

KCET, November 6, 2020 (PDF) (URL)

Mentioned in UCLA In the News, November 10, 2020 (PDF) (URL)

 

The library has received three boxes (four linear feet) of additional materials for the Susan Alva Papers. Alva is an immigrant rights lawyer and activist. The collection comprises papers, ephemera, and audiovisual materials documenting her work for the Los Angeles immigrant community.

 

The finding aid for the Candelario Mendoza Music Collection has been updated. Mendoza (1919–2008) was an educator who began his career teaching in a Pomona elementary school and served for many years on the district’s board of education. He was also a part-time disc jockey at a Pomona radio station. In 1950 he also became an emcee and booking agent at Rainbow Gardens, a popular Pomona nightclub. His love of music is reflected in this collection of over 2,000 vinyl records. They span the years 1939–1990 and represent a huge variety of Latin musical genres and styles. Artists include Los Alegres de Terán, Lola Beltrán, Pedro Infante, Libertad Lamarque, and Tito Puente, along with dozens of others. The finding aid for the Candelario Mendoza Music Collection can be found at the Online Archive of California.

 

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

 

In accordance with Chancellor Gene Block’s directive to suspend most on-campus operations, the CSRC Library and its archive are closed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. During this time, CSRC Library staff will remain available via email, and we look forward to engaging with community members remotely. For assistance, please email librarian@chicano.ucla.edu.

 

Cuban American artist Carmen Herrera (b. 1915) is internationally acclaimed for her spare, elegant abstract paintings and sculptures. In this oral history, art historian and independent curator Julia P. Herzberg talks with Herrera about her life and work. Recognition for Herrera came late in her career, following her first major sale in 2004. Click here for the PDF, which is available for download without charge. A list of artists interviewed for the Oral History Series can be found here.

 

Do your holiday shopping at the CSRC! Through December 18, a large selection of CSRC Press books are available at 50 percent off, tax and shipping included! In addition, all Chicano Cinema and Media Arts series DVDs have been discounted to $15, tax and shipping included. To see the full list of sale titles, visit the CSRC website. To place an order, contact the CSRC directly by emailing Ari Hoyos, CSRC business assistant, at ahoyos@chicano.ucla.edu.

 

All back issues of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, including the fall 2020 issue as well as individual essays, are available for download at IngentaConnect. Print and digital subscriptions are also available through this platform. The fall 2020 issue includes an analysis of the public rhetoric of Donald Trump that documents the president’s racist statements about immigrants and Latinos, an examination of how literary strategies challenge established frameworks and preconceived binaries in the work of novelists Ana Castillo and Tómas Rivera, and a look at Mexican American masculinities in the reality TV show Los Cowboys. The dossier section, curated by Rafael Pérez-Torres, focuses on the temporality of Latinx and Chicanx studies, and Antonio Bernal, whose mural in Del Rey, California, is considered one of the earliest of the Chicano art movement, is featured in the artist’s communiqué and on the cover. To explore all issues from the past fifty years, and purchase or subscribe, click here.

 

The Institute of American Cultures offers in-residence appointments to support research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicana/os. The IAC especially encourages 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. Each 2021-22 IAC Visiting Scholar will receive funding for one or more quarters and may receive up to $35,000 for three quarters (contingent upon rank, experience, and date of completion of their terminal degree). In the event that an award is for less than three quarters or a nine-month appointment, the funds will be prorated in accordance with the actual length of the award. Visiting Scholar appointments are for persons who currently hold a permanent academic appointment. Visiting Scholar funds will be paid through the awardees home institution and awardees will be expected to continue their health insurance through that source. These funds may be used to supplement sabbatical support for a total that does not exceed the awardee’s current institutional salary. Awardees may receive up to $4,000 in research support. The Bunche Center for African American Studies will not have a Visiting Scholar for the 2021-22 academic year. 

 

Application deadline: January 7, 2021, 11:59 p.m. (PT). Applicants will be notified in March.

For more information and to preview the application: https://www.iac.ucla.edu/funding/visiting-scholars
To Apply: https://sa.ucla.edu/IAC/VisitingScholar/Home

For further information, please contact the coordinator of the appropriate UCLA Ethnic Studies Research Center. 

 

The UC Office of the President has launched the University of California–Hispanic Serving Institutions Doctoral Diversity Initiative (UC-HSI DDI). This systemwide effort is designed to support faculty diversity by enhancing pathways to the professoriate for underrepresented students from California Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). The UC-HSI DDI program includes two components: 1) Competitive grant awards to UC faculty/faculty administrators that will support short- and long-term programs/projects to enhance and expand pathways to the professoriate for underrepresented minorities, with a goal to increase faculty diversity and inclusion at UC; and 2) funding to support graduate student preparation for the professoriate. (UCOP will coordinate directly with campus graduate divisions for this component of the Initiative.) The grant program offers two funding mechanisms, with small awards up to $50K and large awards up to $350K. For more information and to view the full RFP, visit the UC-HSI DDI webpage  or contact gradstudies@ucop.edu. Deadline for proposals: January 29, 2021.

 

The Institute of American Cultures (IAC) invites applications for support of research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicanas/os for 2021-2022. The Institute also invites proposals on interethnic relations that will increase collaboration between the UCLA ethnic studies research centers and/or between the centers and other campus units.

Eligibility Requirements:
UCLA faculty, staff, graduate students, and IAC visiting research scholars.

Funding: The Research Grant Program is on a reimbursement-basis only. Funds for the purchase of permanent equipment will be provided only under exceptional circumstances. Conference travel, whether the applicant is presenting or attending, is not eligible.

Grant Period: July 1, 2021 through May 31, 2022.

Deadline to apply: March 1, 2021, 11:59 p.m. (PT). Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. Applicants will be notified in May. Prior to submission of the application, applicants should briefly discuss their proposal with the coordinator of the appropriate center, or in the case of interethnic proposals, with each applicable center. All grant recipients, where appropriate, must comply with UCLA’s Protection of Human Subjects in Research before receiving funding. All grant recipients, where appropriate, must comply with UCLA’s Protection of Human Subjects in Research before receiving funding. If you have been awarded this grant for the last two academic year (2019-20 and 2020-21), you are not eligible to apply for a 2021-22 grant.

For more information and to preview the application, visit the IAC site: https://www.iac.ucla.edu/funding/grants

The application is available online at https://sa.ucla.edu/IAC/ResearchGrant.

 

In accordance with Chancellor Gene Block’s directive to suspend most on-campus operations, the CSRC is closed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. During this time, CSRC staff will remain available via email (http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/about/staff) and at csrcinfo@chicano.ucla.edu.