CSRC Fellows & Visiting Scholars 2005-2006

George Sanchez, Associate Professor, USC History Department & Program in American Studies and Ethnicity (hosted at UCLA by the Asian American Studies Center). His proposed project for 2005-06, Remaking Community: A Multiracial History of the Boyle Heights Neighborhood of East Los Angeles, examines Mexican, Japanese, Jewish, and African American residential settlement in the multi-ethnic Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles. His study is unlike other prior studies of East Los Angeles in that it employs a multi-ethnic approach and is not circumscribed by theoretical issues pertaining to Mexican American community activism. Methodologically, moreover, this project is innovative and thorough, combining historiography, oral history, interviews, political economy, and urban planning, and drawing from detailed empirical research. Sanchez has already completed four chapters of this book project, and has secured a book contract with the University of California Press. The IAC postdoctoral fellowship will afford Sanchez the opportunity to research and write the remaining two chapters of this book.

 

Tara Yosso, Assistant Professor, Department of Chicana/o Studies and Education, UC Santa Barbara. Her research during 2005-06 will draw upon U.S. national data (she is a licensed user of the Doctorate Records Project data) and she will use this data, using CRT, to document the roads taken by Chicana/os, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans to receive the doctorate degree from 1980 to 2002. No other research has systematically documented this for each of the four groups by race and gender. This examination of the four groups and a comparative analysis that includes Whites women and males will make a significant scholarly contribution to the four UCLA ethnic studies research centers. Dr. Yosso's research merges the fields of higher education, critical race theory, and ethnic studies.

 

David Hernandez, UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow, 2005-06. PhD (2005), Comparative Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

As a President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, Dr. Hernandez will revise the genealogical analysis of immigrant detention in the U.S. that he presented in his dissertation by extending the study in two related areas: 1) the competing authorities of the three federal branches of government over the creation and administration of detention policy; and 2) the relationship between detention facilities and federal prisons. Arising out of an absence in the literature encountered during his dissertation research, this new investigation will broaden the implications of his original thesis by providing a more complete account of how immigrant incarceration affects detainees and their families, as well as immigrant and citizen co-ethnics.

 

Karen Mary Davalos, Associate Professor, Loyola Marymount University

Professor Davalos will be a scholar-in-residence at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library, where she will conduct archival research on our extensive holdings on the Mexican Museum (established in 1970). She will also write an original history of the museum as part of our Library's "Chicano Archives" catalogue series.

 

Mary C. Beltrán, Assistant Professor, Communication Arts and Chicana/o & Latina/o Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Beltran will continue work on her current research project, a book manuscript titled Lessons in Hollywood Latinidad: Latin@ Stars and the Evolution of U.S. Racial Borders. It is a study of the construction of Latino and Latina star images by Hollywood film studios, television networks, and producers, in conjunction with response by audiences, critics, and activists, and of the sociopolitical implications of these dynamics. Throughout this historical exploration Dr. Beltran illuminates the relationship of Latino/a star promotion to the shifting status of Mexican Americans and other Latino/as in the U.S., and in particular to the evolution of the cultural racialization of Latinos as non-white in this country. This project includes in-depth case studies of the careers, public images, and popular and critical reception to Latino/a actors Dolores Del Rio, Rita Moreno, Desi Arnez, Freddie Prinze, Lupe Ontiveros, and Jennifer Lopez.

 

Roberto Emilio Montenegro, PhD candidate, Department of Sociology, UCLA

Mr. Montenegro's dissertation, "Parent Expectations, Spanish-Speaking Doctor-Parent Communication, and Inappropriate Antibiotic Prescribing for Pediatric Upper Respiratory Infections," examines whether the children of primarily Spanish-speaking Latino immigrants receive the same medical treatment for upper respiratory infections (e.g. ear, nose, and throat infections, colds and flues) compared to the children of English-speaking parents. The dissertation builds upon the areas of medical sociology, conversation analysis, and theories of race and ethnicity. It seeks to provide a novel approach to the study of minority health, quality of health care, and health disparities. This research will be one of the first to examine how ethnicity affects doctor-parent communication styles and the practices of monolingual Spanish-speaking individuals, and help to answer the question as to why Latinos experience high rates of inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions.

 

Nadine Bermudez, PhD candidate, Graduate School of Education, UCLA

Ms. Bermudez' dissertation, "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 1946 "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 case 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.

 

Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Assistant Professor, Department of History, UCLA

Project: "Constructing the Criminal Alien: A Historical Framework for Analyzing Border Vigilantes at the Turn of the 21st Century"

 

Paolo Prolo, Assistant Researcher, School of Dentistry, UCLA

Maria Rebeca Burciaga, PhD candidate, Graduate School of Education, UCLA

Project: “Having It All: Chicana Education Doctoral Students' Familial and Professorial Aspirations”

 

Kelly D. Main, PhD candidate, Department of Urban Planning, UCLA

Project: “MacArthur Park: Rethinking Attachments to Place in a Culturally Diverse and Transnational Environment”