CSRC Newsletter - February 2007

CSRC Newsletter Volume 5, Number 5

Director's Message

The other day, I decided to look up Chicano in the American Heritage Dictionary. After all, Chicanos are Americans, we have a heritage, and we use language—sometimes two or more. Well, imagine my surprise when I encountered the first words that appear: “Usage Problem.” Following that is a perfunctory definition, “A Mexican-American,” and then a warning: “Care should be taken in using the term Chicano when referring to Mexican-Americans.” Interestingly, there is no entry for Mexican-American, making Chicano a word that runs into a semantic dead end within the dictionary (and, by extension, language). It refers to a meaning that is simply not there, and it has no history other than that of an unexplained “usage problem.” Intrigued, I soon discovered that there are also no entries for Puerto Rican, Cuban American, or Dominican, but there is a lengthy entry for Cajun. Instead of these ethnic-specific terms, I found Hispanic, which was identified as the “entirely acceptable” term for all people of Latin American and Spanish descent. But entirely acceptable to whom? Needless to say, I could not find an answer to that question in the dictionary, and that is perhaps the bigger usage problem.
 
Chon A. Noriega, Director and Professor
 

CSRC News

CSRC is proud to announce that Professor Abel Valenzuela, chair of the CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee, is the father of a new son, Myles, who was born on Friday morning, January 26, 2007. Felicidades to Abel and Sophia!
 

CSRC Events

CSRC Press Manager to Give Keynote
The UCLA Center for the Study of Women will hold its annual public conference onwomen and gender this Friday, February 2, 2007, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the UCLA Faculty Center. The keynote speaker is CSRC Press Manager Wendy Belcher, who will be speaking at 12:30 p.m. on “Writing Gender: Recent Research on Power, Productivity, and Publication.” To see a list of panels and papers, please go to the conference website.
 
Student Research Grants Workshop
The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center will host an information session for students interested in learning about 2007–08 Institute of American Cultures (IAC) research grants, which are available to UCLA graduate students as well as faculty and research staff. The workshop will be held on Wednesday, February 7, 2007, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. in 179 Haines Hall. Refreshments will be served. The deadline for IAC grant applications is Friday, April 27, 2007. For questions about the session, please email Sagrario Hernandez. To obtain information about IAC research grants and applications, visit their website. For questions regarding Chicano Studies research grants, email Carlos M. Haro or call (310) 267-5290.
 
Save the Date
Gloria Steinem will be the keynote speaker at a program marking the opening of the Lupe Anguiano Archive at the CSRC Library. Henry Cisneros will give the closing remarks. The collection documents activist Lupe Anguiano's work on behalf of human rights, women’s rights, and the protection of the environment. The program will be Monday, March 12, 7:30–8:30 p.m., in UCLA’s Korn Hall.  A reception will follow the program. Please RSVP by March 1 to 310-206-7575.
 

CSRC Library & Archive  

Finding Aids Updated
Work progresses on enhancing the finding aids that are published at the Online Archive of California (OAC). To better serve the needs of our research community, the following CSRC collections have been organized in series order:
 
1. Hunger Strike for Chicano Studies Department Papers, 1993
2. The Fire of Life: The Robert Legorreta – Cyclona Collection, 1962–2002
3. Ron Lopez Sleepy Lagoon Research Papers, ca. 1930–1970
4. The Laura Aguilar Collection [ca. 1988-2003]
5. The Self Help Graphics & Art Research Collection Papers, 1980–1990
6. The VIVA Papers, 1985–1995

This month the CARA (Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation) Collection and The Mexican Museum of San Francisco Papers will join the collections organized in series order.

New Library Resources
The three-volume encyclopedia Latinas in the United States (2006), edited by Vicki Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez Korrol, is now available at the CRSC Library.
 
The CSRC Library has acquired twenty-three videos of movies featuring Libertad Lamarque, Tin Tan, Rocio Durcal, and Mauricio Garcés. Also of interest are two videos about the Zapatista revolt: Storm from the Mountain and Zapatista. All videos are available for viewing at the CSRC Library.
 

CSRC Press

The A Ver Book Series
The press is excited to announce that the first book in the A Ver book series, Gronk, will be released in March. This book on the extraordinary artist Gronk launches a new era in the study of Latina/o art. Latina/o artists have received too little recognition, especially given their impact on the arts. The books in the A Ver series, each devoted to an individual artist, are designed to rectify this oversight by providing biographies, analysis, bibliographies, and full-color illustrations of the artist’s works. The series will be distributed through the University of Minnesota Press. To buy advance copies, go to their website. A DVD on Gronk and his works and two online resources—a teacher’s guide, and an extensive digital archive related to the book—will soon be available through the press.
 
American Library Association Convention
CSRC Press attended the annual mid-winter meeting of U.S. librarians, held in Seattle in mid-January. This is always a good opportunity for the press to find out what librarians are thinking and buying. Librarians from every state repeatedly report that their number of Latino patrons is growing by leaps and bounds and that they are finding it difficult to find Spanish-language or Latino-oriented materials for them. The press is happy to serve in this capacity, along with other important Latina/o presses, including Cinco Puntos Press, Bilingual Review Press, and Arte Público Press, as well as the new Rayo imprint at Harper Collins.
 
Belcher Book Contract
Many of you know that the manager of CSRC Press, Wendy Belcher, teaches courses for students and faculty on how to get their writing published. During her ten years of teaching these courses at UCLA and internationally, plus overseeing the submission process at Aztlán, she has collected a wealth of information about academic publishing. This month she signed a contract with Sage Publications to publish her own book on the topic, Writing and Publishing the Academic Article: A Step-by-Step Guide for Sending Your Essay to a Peer-Reviewed Journal in Twelve Weeks. Belcher will have to follow her own advice closely in order to deliver the final manuscript to the publishers by December 2007! The book should be released in Summer 2008. If you are interested in more information, or subscribing to her free newsletter for scholarly writers, please see her website
 
To read all issues of Aztlán, please go to the journal hosting site!
To buy any CSRC products, please go to our new CSRC Store!
To purchase a variety of products with our logo, please go to Cafepress!
To subscribe to our journal, email your postal address to us!
Information about all our publications is available at the CSRC Press website.
 

Opportunities

Smithsonian Institution Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum,
Kell Munoz Fellowship
This fellowship, providing a $10,000 stipend, is open only to U.S. citizens or permanent residents of Latino or Hispanic descent who are prospective or current graduate students or postdoctoral scholars. Several internships are offered to work in the museum's Education Department for a ten-month period. Fellows work twenty-four hours a week on projects and assist the program coordinator. The targeted fields are the humanities, the arts and architecture, arts administration, art history, education, communications, and design. The deadline is March 1, 2007. For more information, contact: Internship Coordinator; c/o Education Department; Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; 2 East 91st Street, New York, NY 10128.
 
UC MEXUS Call for Proposals
Proposals for grants for University of California principal investigators and graduate students are being accepted. Proposals are due February 5, March 26, June 4, or October 1, 2007, depending upon the grant. For more information on the numerous grants available from UC MEXUS, please visit their website.
 

Contacts

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