CSRC Newsletter - March 2010

All the world’s a stage,

and all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

and one man in his time plays many parts.

 

              —Shakespeare, As You Like It

 

This month, the Chicano Studies Research Center joins UCLA’s other ethnic studies research centers in an exhibition at the Fowler Museum that commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the centers’ founding (see below). The students who helped usher in that change have played many parts in the decades since that time, becoming professors, professionals, business and civic leaders, and artists. They have taught multiple generations of students, built community-based institutions, and challenged our society to live up to its ideals and our constitutional rights.

 

The passage from Shakespeare’s As You Like It contains several implied questions: as the Chicano and Chicana players make their entrances and exits, is anyone listening? Will the many parts that they have played be understood as essential to the history of the world? I encourage you to visit the exhibition, critically engage with the history being presented, and imagine the steps we might take toward a better future for all. And teachers, bring your classes! Online exhibition guides for teachers and students in grades 7–12 will be available on the CSRC website and those of the three other centers, as well as the museum.

 

The CSRC recently released the latest book in the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series, this one on María Brito. Her artwork is a good example of a critical engagement with history. In Party at Goya’s: First Arrivals (2006), Brito arranges sculptural forms based on several characters from Francisco de Goya’s aquatint print series Los Caprichos (1799). But she also inserts both herself and Goya at the edge of the scene, seated on a bench and talking to each other. Here, one can detect the beginnings of a conversation with the canon, with History writ large, although these have often appeared to turn a deaf ear to U.S. Latinos. Ironically, Goya himself was deaf by the time he produced Los Caprichos. But Brito’s conversation is notable, not for the artist being heard per se, as if seeking validation, but for the fact that she speaks through rather than against the canon, History, and the world stage. That is our challenge as we celebrate our fortieth anniversary and look ahead to the next decade.

 

 

40th Anniversary Exhibition Now Open
Art, Activism, Access: Forty Years of Ethnic Studies at UCLA opened at the Fowler Museum on Sunday, February 28, with a program of music, poetry readings, and activities. The exhibition features murals, graphic art, photographs, films, and objects that document the history of the four UCLA ethnic studies centers: the CSRC, the American Indian Studies Center, the Asian American Studies Center, and the Bunche Center for African American Studies. The opening was featured in a newscast on KPCC, and the mural that was created for the Bunche Center was the subject of a recent story in UCLA Today. The exhibition closes on June 13. To learn more, visit the Fowler Museum website.

 

This academic year marks the fortieth anniversary of the UCLA's four ethnic studies centers. To celebrate this significant milestone, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block has dedicated this year to the theme "Celebrating 40 Years of Ethnic Studies at UCLA." A special website offers information about the anniversary and related events.

 

A variety of items sporting the fortieth anniversary logo is now available from CafePress. Order a T-shirt or a hoodie, a mug or a tote bag, a journal or a bumper sticker — all with the colorful logo designed to commemorate forty years of ethnic studies at UCLA.

 

Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, the first comprehensive consideration of Chicano art in almost two decades, first opened at LACMA and has since traveled to various cities in the United States and Mexico. Phantom Sightings will be next at New York City’s El Museo from March 24 through May 23. For more information, visit El Museo’s website. This exhibition was co-curated by Howard Fox, LACMA; Rita Gonzalez, LACMA; and Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director. The exhibition catalog is available from the University of California Press.

 

Carlos Haro, CSRC postdoctoral scholar in residence and former CSRC assistant director, will participate in “UCLA Day in the District” on Friday, March 19. Alumnus and friends of UCLA will meet with state legislators from Los Angeles County in their district offices. The aim is to build relationships and generate public support for the university. The event is organized by UCLA Government and Community Relations.

 

The Los Angeles Times quoted Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, in a recent article about Historías, a StoryCorps project that is preserving the stories of Latinos in the United States. The StoryCorps mobile studio will be located at the East Los Angeles Public Library through March 20. The article is available on the Los Angeles Times and CSRC websites; for more information about Historías, visit the StoryCorps website.

 

Alvaro Huerta, CSRC visiting scholar and PhD candidate in city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, published two essays in February. The first, in UCLA's Daily Bruin, examines the need for the mainstream media to publicize the positive contributions of Latinas and Latinos. The second, in UC Berkeley's The Daily Californian, focuses on the predicament of a Chicano doctoral candidate.

 

The Fortieth Anniversary Distinguished Lecture for the winter quarter will feature Antonia Hernández, who will present “2020 Visions: Planning for a Latino Majority in Los Angeles.” The lecture will be held Thursday, March 4, 5:00–6:00 p.m., in the Faculty Center Sequoia Room. Ms. Hernández has been a crucial voice in civil rights, immigration, and philanthropy for more than three decades. Since 2004 she has been president and CEO of the California Community Foundation. Ms. Hernández is past president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which she joined in 1981. A reception will follow the lecture. Please confirm your attendance on the CSRC’s Facebook page.

 

The CSRC and the UC All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC/ACCORD) will present this year’s Latina/o Education Summit, “Funding K–12 and Higher Education: Impact on Latinos,” on Thursday, March 18, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., at the UCLA Faculty Center. The conference will focus on the funding for public education and the impact it has on Latino students, programs, and departments at every level, from Kindergarten through graduate school. Featured speakers are Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel, and Scott L. Waugh, UCLA executive vice chancellor and provost. To learn more about the summit visit the CSRC website.

 

What is Chicano art? Learn the many answers to this question at “The Raza's Edge: The Chicano Presence in L.A. Art History,” on Saturday, April 3, 1:00–4:00 p.m., at LACMA’s Bing Theater. A series of discussions will feature artists from the generation that created new work, advocated for social change, and trained younger artists. Participants are former members of Chicano art groups and centers that formed in Los Angeles in the 1970s. They will debate the role of art in the Chicano community and beyond, while looking back at the emergence of Chicano art, its legacy, and its future. A reception will follow. Admission is free, but tickets are required; tickets are available at the box office one hour before the event. Visit LACMA’s website later this month for more details.

 

After many months of planning, the CSRC has updated the storage system for its archival collections. As a small repository, the library was running out of room for storing collections while they are being processed. New shelving has enlarged storage capacity by approximately 50 percent!

 

Last month the CSRC acquired another addition to its Homeboy Industries collection. We look forward to maintaining a strong working relationship with the organization and its founder, Father Greg Boyle. The new resource will be available for research by the end of spring quarter.

 

We have begun processing and preserving the papers of Yolanda Retter Vargas, the CSRC librarian from 2003 until her death in 2007. Yolanda fought for social justice for overlooked groups, particularly lesbians of color. We plan to make her wide-ranging and eclectic collection available to researchers by the fall of 2010.

 

María Brito, volume 4 in the CSRC Press’s groundbreaking A Ver: Revisioning Art History series, is now available. Juan A. Martínez, who focuses on Brito’s unique interplay of the personal and the universal, highlights her as an artist who challenges cultural, social, and artistic barriers. The book, which includes sixty-four full-color illustrations, an exhibition history, and bibliography of writings on the artist, can be ordered from the distributor, University of Minnesota Press. For a preview, visit the CSRC Press website.

 

“This comprehensive and insightful text explores Brito’s world of magical beauty, filled with fears and desires. Juan Martínez reveals not only Brito’s life and career but also her valiant and spirited art, introducing us to her maze of rooms, the all-seeing eye filled with tears, the caprichos of her personal and cultural mythology.”

 

— Amalia Mesa-Bains, Visual and Public Art, California State University Monterey Bay

 

Current subscribers will receive their copies of the new issue of Aztlán in mid-March. In celebration of Aztlán’s fortieth anniversary, both 2010 issues contain special dossier sections. The Spring 2010 issue (volume 35, number 1) features “Atzlán at Forty,” a compilation of recollections from some of the path-breaking Chicana/os who helped launch and nurture the journal—and the field of Chicana/o studies.

 

In the editor’s commentary, Chon A. Noriega uses the art of María Brito as the basis for a meditation on the current role Chicana/os in academia and society. Three of the essays in this issue consider how globalization and decolonialization is expressed in the work of Gloria Anzaldúa: Maylei Blackwell’s “Líderes Campesinas: Nepantla Strategies and Grassroots Organizing at the Intersection of Gender and Globalization”; George Hartley’s “The Curandera of Conquest: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Decolonial Remedy”; and Pablo Ramirez’s “Toward a Borderlands Ethics: The Undocumented Migrant and Haunted Communities in Contemporary Chicana/o Fiction.” Otto Santa Ana’s “Framing Peace as Violence: Television News Depictions of the 2007 Police Attack on Immigrant Rights Marchers in Los Angeles” (written with Layza López and Edgar Munguía) and Lysa Rivera’s “Los Atravesados: Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Ethno-cyborgs” examine the representation of Chicana/os in the news media and performance art. The art of Missy Ávila Ovalles is featured on the cover and in the artist’s communiqué, and the issue concludes with Christian Ramírez’s homenaje to Chicano activist Roberto Martínez.

 

Not a subscriber? Support Chicana/o scholarship: visit the CSRC online store and place a subscription. Subscribers receive two issues each year, plus Internet access to view, print, and download every article from every issue of Aztlán.

 

Visit the CSRC website for online exhibition guides for Art, Activism, Access: Forty Years of Ethnic Studies at UCLA. The teacher’s guide offers background information and activities for students in grades 7-12. The student’s worksheet contains hands-on activities that students can complete as they tour the exhibition.