CSRC Newsletter - September 2009

This year the CSRC is celebrating its fortieth anniversary. This milestone is a testament to the talent, tenacity, and vision of CSRC staff, faculty, students, and all who have supported us over the years. In spite of the uncertain economy, the CSRC is stronger than ever. We boast the only independent Chicano studies library, and we have an unparalleled and ever-growing archival program. This year the CSRC Press will release several new books, including two in the A Ver series, Celia Alvarez Muñoz and María Brito. CSRC researchers are actively investigating such important topics as the proliferation of hate speech against Latinos, immigrants, and other groups and exploring the issue of health care access for non-English speakers.

 

The CSRC was born out of the efforts of dedicated staff, faculty, and students who believed in the need to explore and chronicle the experiences of Chicanos. Consider the “principle objectives” spelled out in the CSRC’s first newsletter, from July 15, 1969:

 

1. To encourage and support research into all areas of knowledge relevant to the Chicano community.

2. To assist in the development of programs and research which will focus the unique resources of this university on the problems of the Chicano community.

3. To assist in the development of new curriculum and bibliographical materials dealing with the culture, history, and problems of Chicanos.

4. To actively engage in furthering the involvement of the University with the Chicano community.

 

Over the last forty years, as the Chicano-Latino population has grown, the CSRC has pursued this original mission with a commitment to excellence, leadership, civic engagement, and scholarship. This year promises a full slate of public lectures, film screenings, readings, and events that highlight the CSRC’s important work. Information will be available on our website and in the newsletter, and we’ll be sending email announcements throughout the year. We look forward to celebrating with you and to reaffirming our commitment to the core mission of the CSRC at UCLA.

 

 

SRC Director Appointed to UCHRI Board
Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director and professor of cinema and media studies, has been appointed to a five-year term on the Board of Governors of the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). The UCHRI is a multicampus research unit that serves all ten campuses in the UC system. It stresses interdisciplinary research and aims to strengthen the humanities throughout the UC system with the goal of overcoming the intellectual and institutional barriers that may separate the humanities from other fields.

 

CSRC Books Receive Awards
Three CSRC Press titles received awards at the 2009 International Latino Book Awards. The Art of Healing Latinos: Firsthand Accounts from Physicians and Other Health Advocates, edited by David Hayes-Bautista, UCLA professor and CSRC affiliate, and Roberto Chiprut, was awarded first place in the Nonfiction–Health Book in English category. Receiving second place in the Nonfiction–Biography in English category was Paths to Discovery: Autobiographies from Chicanas with Careers in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering, edited by Norma E. Cantú. Karen Mary Davalos’s Yolanda M. López, volume 2 in the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series, was awarded honorable mention in the Nonfiction–Arts Book in English category. The awards were presented during BookExpo America on May 28. We extend our warmest congratulations to the editors and authors.

 

A Ver Artist Featured at Chicana/o Biennial
Influential Chicana artist Yolanda M. López was one of the artists featured at the 2009 Chicana/o Biennial, an annual exhibition and public forum that focuses on contemporary Chicano art. The event took place on June 5, 2009, at MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana), an arts space in San Jose that promotes Chicano and Latino visual, literary, and performance arts. The artist signed copies of Yolanda M. López, volume 3 of the CRSC Press’s A Ver: Revisioning Art History series.

 

High School Students Visit the CSRC
Vice-Chancellor Janina Montero, Assistant Chancellor Antoinette Mongelli, and the CSRC co-sponsored the visit of a high school group from Homeboy Industries on June 1. CSRC staff gave a tour of the CSRC Library and talked with the twenty students about the programs and services that the CSRC offers. Homeboy Industries helps at-risk and formerly gang-involved youth become positive and contributing members of society through education, training, and job placement. The purpose of the visit was to motivate the students to apply to institutions of higher education. Another group of students visited the CSRC while participating in the Los Angeles Hispanic Youth Symposium on August 17–21.

 

2009–10 LSFA Appointees Announced
Three CSRC staff have been appointed to the 2009–10 executive board of the Latino Staff and Faculty Association (LSFA). Congratulations to Luz Orozco, who was reappointed as LSFA treasurer, Darling Sianez, who was appointed as secretary, and Crystal Perez, who will be the newsletter editor.

 

Institute for the Study of Hate Speech
The Summer Institute for the Study of Hate Speech, generously funded by the UCLA Graduate Division, continues its research into hate speech on commercial talk radio. Graduate students from the fields of education, film and media studies, and public health are assisting in the adaptation of software technology for the assessment of hate speech and the development of new categories of analysis.

 

Welcome, Esmé Simona
Congratulations to Laura Isabel Serna, CSRC visiting scholar, on the birth of her daughter Esmé Simona. Esmé, who was born in August, is Dr. Serna’s first child. We wish them both the best.

 

Hammer Lecture on A Ver Artist
Roberto Tejada, associate professor of art history at the University of Texas, Austin, and Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, will give a joint lecture at the Hammer Museum on Thursday, September 24, at 7:00 p.m. Professors Tejada and Noriega will discuss the work of Celia Alvarez Muñoz, a conceptual and multimedia artist known for her installations and public art. Professor Tejada is the author of Celia Alvarez Muñoz, volume 3 in the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series published by the CSRC Press. A book signing at the Hammer Museum Store will follow the lecture. More information is available on the Hammer Museum website. The following day Professor Tejada will participate in a colloquium that will explore the themes of periodization and cultural impact in Los Angeles from 1960 through 1980.

 

The CSRC Library announces the addition of three collections.

 

The Dan Guerrero Research Collection documents Mr. Guerrero’s successful career as a Chicano activist, producer, and artist. The collection also includes materials reflecting the life and career of his father, Lalo Guerrero, who is known as the father of Chicano music. This collection supplements the collection housed at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA), a division of UCSB’s Special Collections Department. The materials donated to the CSRC include duplicate copies of ephemera, press kits, photographs, and audio and video materials.

 

The Kelly Lytle-Hernandez Collection of Border Patrol Research Papers was donated by Kelly Lytle-Hernandez, assistant professor of history at UCLA. These papers, which date from 1918 through 1990, include photographs, official correspondence, and other government documents photocopied from border patrol records.

 

The American GI Forum was founded in 1948 in Corpus Christi, Texas, as a resource for Mexican American WWII veterans and their families. The American GI Forum of California Collection contains correspondence, photographs, ephemera, and organizational papers that document the organization’s activities.

 

The CSRC was awarded a Ford Foundation grant to support its effort to increase LGBT and women’s collections. The initiative has a fourfold mission: to educate women and LGBT communities about the importance of documenting and preserving Latina and Latino history; to educate Latina and Latino communities about the importance of women’s stories and LGBT history within their archival efforts; to provide women and LGBT Latinas and Latinos with archival materials that can function as a source of pride, inspiration, and new scholarship; and to educate “mainstream” archival institutions about the need for both women’s and LGBT archival holdings and for culturally sensitive collecting and archival practices. To accomplish these goals, the CSRC has planned a series of workshops centered on the theme of community archiving, especially among underserved communities. The first workshop was offered during the MALCS (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social) Summer Institute, which was held in July at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Another workshop is scheduled to take place at UCLA in conjunction with the Los Angeles Queer Studies Conference in October.

 

The Art of Laura Aguilar
For nearly three decades Laura Aguilar has used photography as a tool to speak about people and issues not considered part of the cultural mainstream. Laura Aguilar: Life, the Body, Her Perspective, volume 8 of the Chicano Cinema and Media Art Series, presents personal video essays by the artist, a lecture she gave at UCLA in 2005 that describes her life as a photographer, and a documentary and an interview produced by Michael Stone, CSRC archivist. A comprehensive set of slide shows features works from the artist’s extensive oeuvre, including images from her Family and Friends, In Sandy’s Room, and Clothed/Unclothed series. A bonus CD contains a PowerPoint survey that enables students and educators to study individual images, facilitating discussion of Aguilar’s groundbreaking art. Laura Aguilar is available for immediate shipment from the CSRC online store.

 

New Issue of Aztlán
The fall issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies is on the way to subscribers. The first three essays of the new issue explore Chicana/o identity in relation to gender and sexuality in art and literature: Yolanda Padilla discusses Arturo Islas’s representation of homosexuality and how it disrupts notions of identity; Karen Mary Davalos analyzes the political activism and aesthetic strategies of Yolanda M. López; and Tace Hedrick describes how inherited notions of race, race mixing, and sexuality combine with spiritual belief in the work of Gabriela Mistral and Gloria Anzaldúa. In the concluding two essays, Robert J. Durán and Tamar Diane Wilson examine the Chicana/o experience through the lens of ethnography and sociology, with Durán writing on the four core ideals that encourage gang cohesiveness and Wilson evaluating the impact that competing “moral entrepreneurs” have on the debate surrounding undocumented immigrants.

 

The dossier section features articles on influential Chicano artists: Ramón Garcia examines Ricardo Valverde’s rich photographic work, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña reflects on his own artistic production in a “performance chronology.” Chon A. Noriega opens the issue with an assessment of Robert M. Young’s The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, a film based on Americo Paredes’s “With His Pistol in His Hand.” In the artist’s communiqué, Lalo Alcaraz explains how Viva Obama!—which is featured on the cover—came to be created.

 

Subscribe to Aztlán today at the CSRC online store. A year’s subscription includes two issues, mailed in September and March, and full online access to every previous issue of the journal.

 

Visiting Scholars for 2009–10
The CSRC supports a visiting scholars program that attracts scholars from institutions throughout the country and researchers from abroad. Scholars conduct research on a wide variety of subjects. We are pleased to announce the scholars for the upcoming academic year.
 

C. Ondine Chavoya has been selected as the Institute of American Cultures (IAC) Visiting Scholar. Dr. Chavoya is an associate professor of art history and Chicana/o studies at Williams College. He will be completing research on a major exhibition for LACMA as well as contributing to Los Angeles: The Mexican Presence in L.A. Art, 1945–1980, an exhibition that is being organized by the CSRC.

 

Celestino Deleyto is a professor of English and film at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. Professor Deleyto’s research interests center on contemporary Mexican cinema and Chicano and border representations. He is completing a book on Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu for the Contemporary Directors series published by the University of Illinois Press.

 

Jose Limon, professor of American and English literature at the University of Texas at Austin, will focus on class enrollment in Chicano studies over the last forty years during his stay at the CSRC. Dr. Limon’s research bridges the fields of English and anthropology.

 

Sandra de la Loza is a member of the research team for Los Angeles: The Mexican Presence in L.A. Art, 1945–1980. Ms. de la Loza, who earned her MFA from California Statue University, Long Beach, will study Chicano murals in Los Angeles.

 

Laura Isabel Serna, assistant professor of history at Florida State University in Tallahassee, will research transnational cultural history, American film history, and Mexican cinema.

 

Alvaro Huerta is a PhD candidate in city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. While at the CSRC she will research Mexican workers and their social networks.

 

Mari Kawaga is a professor in the Department of International Communication at Hannan University in Japan. Dr. Kawaga’s research interests are California politics, bilingual education policy, and ethnic studies.

 

Seraina Rohrer is a PhD candidate in gender studies and a lecturer in film studies at the University of Zurich. As a visiting scholar she will research films about the border regions.

 

Annette Rukwied is a PhD student at Bielefeld University, Germany. Ms. Rukwied’s research will focus on Latino auto-ethnographic documentary film and TV production.

 

A year’s subscription to Aztlán includes not only two issues filled with research, writing, and reviews from Chicana/o and Latina/o scholars but also online access to every article published since the journal began in 1970. Subscribe online or by mail. Information is available on the Aztlán website.