CSRC Fellows & Visiting Scholars 2004-2005

Lisa Garcia Bedolla, Assistant Professor, Political Science and Latino Studies, UC Irvine

Professor Bedolla is the IAC-Chicano Studies Postdoctoral Fellow for 2004-05.

Her project, The Right to Good Government: Race and Citizenship in California , 1840-1875, deals with the political history of women and racial/ethnic groups in the western U.S. It involves archival and legal research and will result in publication of her second book and a series of articles. The project will consider a period of California 's Mexican era and the post-1848 period and will contribute to ethnic studies by showing how the State of California legislative and legal process determined how different racial and ethnic groups (Native Americans, Asians and Mexicans) could or could not exercise basic citizenship rights. The successful completion of the fellowship project will be a significant contribution to ethnic studies and education.

 

L.S. Kim, Assistant Professor, Department of Film and Television, UC Santa Cruz

Professor Kim will be the IAC Postdoctoral Fellow hosted at the Bunche Center for African American Studies in 2004-05. Her postdoctoral research, Maid in Color: The Figure of the Racialized Domestic in American Television, is an analysis of race and media – how race is represented – the process of representing racialized figures (African American, Asian American and Latinos), as well as the consequences of doing so for American culture. The work will contribute to ethnic studies by showing that racialized domestics represent not just race (racial identity) but also race relations – and gender and class relations as well.

 

Max Benavidez, Director, Public Communications Strategies

Max Benavidez will be working on a book about the Chicano artist Gronk and participating in other arts-related events and research. A 1974 UCLA alumnus, Benavidez has held a number of positions in the communications industry: editor of Forum Publications; writing instructor at CSU Northridge; contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times; consultant, producer and panelist for "Free-for-All," a KNBC public-affairs program; and general manager/partner of Edit One, a consulting firm. In 1990, Benavidez became director of University Communications for CSU's Office of the Chancellor and in 1999 he became the assistant vice chancellor of UCLA Communications.

 

Eve B. Oishi, Associate Professor, Women's Studies, CSU Long Beach

Professor Oishi is a Chicano Studies Research Center Fellow for 2004-05. Her project, Bodies Without Borders: Transnationality and Queer Identity in Independent Film, explores the connections between questions of form within cinema by people of color. It is a study of issues of race, gender and sexuality within American culture and politics; focusing on cinema by people of color (Asian Americans, African Americans, American Indian and Chicano) to make this cinematic work accessible to new audiences as well as place it within new theoretical and analytical frames.

 

Ellie D. Hernández, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, UC Santa Barbara

Professor Hernandez is a visiting scholar at the center and conducting research for a book project “Gender and sexuality in the Americas” The focus of her research for 2004- 2005 examines a variety of contexts in which U.S. Latina/o and Chicana/o literary and cultural literary, cinematic and cultural representations of Chicana/os and Latina/os sexual and racial propriety have been performed and represented. Drawing upon American Cultural Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies and feminist critiques, her work engages a comparative analysis of Chicana/o and Latina/o sexuality while looking at various models used to represent sexuality of Latina/os and Chicana/o. The interdisciplinary nature of project engages onsite archival historical research, media, film, anthropology (cultural studies), consumer theory, as well as gender and development analysis to initiate a study of the effects of consumption in the gender and sexuality in Latina/o communities examined.

 

Nadine Bermudez, PhD candidate, Department of Education, UCLA

Advisor: Professor Daniel Solorzano

Ms. Bermudez' dissertation, to be completed June 2005), Mendez v Westminster School District: The Story of a Mexican American Community's Struggle to End Race Discrimination in Their Neighborhood Schools , is a study of a little known 1947 "Mexican school" desegregation court case. However, it was a landmark decision for California education and of great historical value and had implications for the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision that came seven years later. The dissertation research strongly relates to IAC research goals and to the educational research of the CSRC; Ms. Bermudez is in a unique position to access information and conduct research on the Mendez case and this promises to make an important contribution to the fields of Chicano studies, ethnic studies, and education.

For more information on this program, click here.

 

Raymond Rocco, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, UCLA

Project: "Socioeconomic Mobility Among the Mexican American People"

 

Maria Estella Zarate, PhD candidate, Graduate School of Education, UCLA

Project: "When Grades Don't Matter: Schooling and Family Experiences of College-Bound and Non-College-Bound Latinas"