CSRC Newsletter - May 2013

The CSRC mourns the passing of Sal Castro, educator and civil rights leader, who fought vociferously for education reform for Mexican Americans. Castro led students through the 1968 high school and middle school walkouts in East Los Angeles and fostered student activism at his renowned Youth Leadership Camp in Malibu. In 2006 the CSRC collaborated with Castro on “Sal Castro and the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference: Developing Chicano Leaders since 1963,” a significant research conference at UCLA that focused on the camp, the young leaders that emerged from it, and the dramatic events of 1968. Carlos M. Haro, CSRC assistant director emeritus and co-organizer of that conference, has written a tribute to Castro that is available on the CSRC website. An exhibition related to Castro will be installed in the CSRC Library in coming weeks.

 

CSRC associate director Marissa López has been promoted to associate professor of English and Chicana/o Studies with tenure, effective July 1. Congratulations, Marissa!

 

Artist Ramiro Gomez, whose artwork was recently featured in Luxury, Interrupted, an exhibition at the CSRC Library, will make a presentation on May 9 to students in “Chicano Studies and Sociology M155: Latinos in the Contemporary U.S.” Gomez will discuss the meaning of and influences behind his public art. The class is taught by Vilma Ortiz, professor of sociology.

 

David O'Grady, doctoral candidate in cinema and media studies and assistant editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, reviewed the video game Gaucamelee! for the UCLA Game Lab blog. (PDF)

 

Two films in the CSRC’s Chicano Cinema and Media Arts series, Los Four and Murals of Aztlán: The Street Painters of East Los Angeles, will be screened at the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art (RAFFMA) at Cal State San Bernardino as part of the exhibition Chicano Muralists in Southern California, 1968–1985: The first generation of a cultural revolution—through the camera of Elliot Robert Barkan. The exhibition features Barkan’s photographs of works by Los Four, Gronk, Judith F. Baca, Wayne Healy, among other artists. The first screening, on May 17, will take place during the college’s annual Arts and Music Festival; the second screening, on May 18, will be part of a program at the museum for International Museum Day. In both cases the films will be used to inform discussion about the artists featured in the exhibition, their murals, and social change. The exhibition continues through May 25.

 

Six high school students from Essex Street Academy in Manhattan visited the CSRC last month. They participate in the school’s extracurricular “Movement Makers” program, in which they study social movements and consider ways to advocate for issues they care about. Their interest in the farm workers’ and Mexican American civil rights movements led them to request time at the CSRC to learn about its history of community building for Chicanos at UCLA and beyond. Carlos M. Haro, assistant director emeritus, spoke to the students not only about the center’s founding but also about its antecedents in Mexican Americans’ fight for their right to public education. Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, spoke about the CSRC’s current projects, ambitions, and challenges. Tlaloc Vasquez, representing the student group MEChA, discussed some of the ways that Chicano students at UCLA unite around salient issues and the importance of taking action and being part of a process of change even when the outcome is uncertain.

 

In early April CSRC director Chon A. Noriega welcomed twenty prospective graduate students in the UCLA Cinema and Media Studies (CMS) program. Noriega spoke to the students in the library and introduced the group to the CSRC’s resources, projects, and publishing program as part of a daylong recruitment effort for CMS.

 

The restoration and reinstallation of El Gran Teatro de la Luna, Rafael Ferrer's public artwork in Philadelphia's Fairhill Square, is now complete. A public rededication of the work, originally installed in 1982 and then put into storage in 1999 for security reasons, will take place Tuesday, May 14. The artist is the subject of the CSRC Press publication Rafael Ferrer, volume 7 in the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series.

 

On March 21 the Latinos and Economic Security (LES) research team, composed of Kathleen Wilber, Max Benavidez, Zach Gassoumis, and CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, presented research and recommendations at “Aging in a Majority-Minority Nation: Interracial and Intergenerational Tensions and Opportunities,” the fifteenth annual symposium organized by the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging (CPRA). Their study on enhancing economic security for the Latino community was based on of eight years of research and analysis. The PowerPoint presentation is available on the CSRC website. (PDF)

 

The Daily Bruin featured a preview of Catholic School Daze by Karen Anzoategui, the performing artist's one-woman show about faith, sexuality, and trauma, which she presented in the CSRC Library on April 24.

The Daily Bruin, April 24, 2013 (PDF)

 

The CSRC Library exhibition Ramiro Gomez: Luxury, Interrupted was featured on the Mex and the City blog.

Mex and the City (blog), April 19, 2013 (PDF)

 

As an example of increased cultural exchange between the United States and Mexico, the Los Angeles Times discussed the exhibition Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective (1972­–1987), now on view at MUAC Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. It is the first large-scale exhibition of a Chicano collective to be presented in Mexico. The 2008 exhibition Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, which traveled to Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and was co-curated by CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, is cited.

Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2013 (PDF)

 

Two editorials published in the Huffington Post by CSRC director Chon A. Noriega were reposted on the Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) / Women Active in Letters and Social Change blog, with his piece on the omission of actress Lupe Ontiveros from the Oscars' “In Memoriam” presentation declared a “must read.” The CSRC archives the MALCS papers.

MALCS blog, March 13 and April 2, 2013 (PDF)

 

 

On Wednesday, May 1, 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m., at the De Neve Auditorium, 352 E. Charles E. Young Dr., the UCLA Blum Center on Poverty and Health in Latin America will conduct its spring symposium, “Informing Responses to Reduce Poverty and Improve Health in Latin America.” The symposium will feature panel discussions presented by UCLA faculty and other experts from a number of disciplines, who will address emerging and unsolved issues related to poverty and health in Latin America. The keynote address will be given by Jaime Sepulveda, executive director of Global Health Sciences and professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Javier Iribarren, CSRC assistant director, has worked closely with the Blum Center to organize this event. For more information, please click here.

 

John Feeley, senior foreign service officer at the U.S. State Department, will present the talk “Obama Administration Policy in the Americas: Harvesting Opportunities for Prosperity” on Wednesday, May 1, 3:00–4:30 p.m., in 2343 Public Affairs Building. Feeley has focused much of his diplomatic career working on issues of importance in the western hemisphere. The event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the César E. Chávez Department for Chicana/o Studies, and the CSRC.

 

Mexican and U.S. scholars and activists from a variety of disciplines will participate in a symposium titled “New Dimensions in the Study and Practice of Mexican and Chicano/Latino Social Movements” on Thursday, May 2, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., in 306 Royce. The symposium will explore economic, political, cultural, and intellectual changes have occurred in the United States and Mexico in the decades since the watershed 1968 Mexican student movement, the historic Chicano mobilizations of the 1960s and 1970s, and the EZLN uprising of 1994. A reception will take place at 5:00 p.m., followed by a panel discussion at 6:00 p.m. that will focus on Art and Social Movements: Cultural Politics in Mexico and Aztlán (Duke, 2012) by Ed McCaughen. For a complete schedule, visit the CSRC website. The symposium is co-sponsored by UCLA’s César E. Chávez Department for Chicana/o Studies, Latin American Institute, Center for Mexican Studies, the Dean of Social Sciences, and the CSRC, and the San Francisco State University Department of Sociology and Sexuality Studies and College of Health and Sciences.

 

The UCLA Environmental Justice Initiative lecture series for 2013 wraps up on Thursday, May 16, 4:00–5:30 p.m., at the UCLA Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM). The talk, “Environmental Justice: A Community Perspective,” will be presented by Carl Maida and Robin Cannon. Maida is a professor of public health at the UCLA School of Dentistry and faculty member at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; Cannon is the co-founder and president of Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles (CCSCLA), a grassroots organization founded in 1985 to oppose the building of a municipal waste incinerator and to address other environmental, social, and economic problems in the South Central community. The Bunche Center for African American Studies and the CSRC organized this lecture. Please RSVP by May 10 by clicking here.

 

The CSRC presents “Lat/emo: A Symposium on Music, Markets, and Latinidad” on Friday, May 31, noon–4:00 p.m., at the Straus Clubhouse, Los Angeles Tennis Center at UCLA. In the spring of 2008 YouTube videos documented violent physical attacks against emo youth in Mexico and Latin America. Journalists and media commentators around the globe asked three questions: how should “emo” be defined, how did the emo subculture develop in Mexico and Latin America, and why did these youths elicit such a violent reaction? This symposium will explore the emergence of emo in the context of post-NAFTA angst, the changes that the emo subculture has undergone, how the music is marketed, and what it means to be Latino. Speakers include music journalist Nikki Darling, José “The Mexican Morrissey” Maldonado, and UCLA professors Marissa López and Miguel M. Unzueta. This event is free, but advance registration is required by May 24: http://latemo.eventbrite.com/

 

 

There’s still time to view Chican@s (re)Imagining Zapata, currently installed at the CSRC Library. The exhibition continues through May 10. Drawing exclusively from CSRC collections, curator Julia Fernandez compares prints made in Mexico City in the 1940s and 1950s at El Taller de Gráfica Popular with illustrations in issues of El Malcriado, the United Farm Workers newspaper, from the 1960s and 1970s, and with posters and prints created by Chicano artists in the 1960s, 1970s, and 2011. The exhibition reveals how iconic images of Zapata and other heroes of the Mexican Revolution were used to inspire Chicana/os to imagine their own social and political revolution in the United States. CSRC Library exhibitions are free and viewable during regular library hours: Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. A digital exhibition containing the images in the exhibition is viewable at postersofrevolution.omeka.net.

 

On April 30 the Young Research Library (YRL) hosted fifteen librarians from Latin America who were in town for the annual conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS). A Getty Foundation grant allowed the librarians to attend the conference and tour local facilities. CSRC librarian Lizette Guerra was on hand to share the work we do at the CSRC.

 

In 2012 the CSRC was awarded an NEH grant to process, preserve, describe, and provide access to five archival collections as part of its initiative dedicated to the post-World War Two generation of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles. These collections are the Edward R. Roybal Papers, the Grace Montañez Davis Papers, the Julian Nava Papers, the Dionicio Morales Papers, and the Ricardo Muñoz Papers. Michael Aguilar, a graduate student in the Latin American studies program, will work on the Edward R. Roybal Papers. Aguilar’s graduate research is on Latin American migration and diaspora, with an emphasis on the diaspora in California.

 

Each year the CSRC partners with the UCLA Department of Information Studies to provide service-learning opportunities for the graduate students enrolled in the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program. This service-learning component is a requirement of “INS STD 201: Ethics, Diversity, and Change in the Information Professions.” Each student must fulfill at least twenty hours of service at an approved site or community organization. MLIS students Caroline Yee, Beth McDonald, and Heather Nelson will work on a range of projects at the library, including the processing of the Raphael Montañez Ortíz Papers, recent materials added to the Michelle Kholos Brooks Collection of Manazar Gamboa Papers, and digitization and metadata entry of various CSRC collections.

 

For more information on these projects, or other volunteer and intern opportunities contact the librarian, Lizette Guerra at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.

 

The CSRC’s art books and DVDs are on sale for a limited time. Save 40 percent on titles in the award-winning A Ver: Revisioning Art History series: María Brito, Rafael Ferrer, Camen Lomas Garza, Gronk, Malaquias Montoya, Yolanda M. López, and Celia Alvarez Muñoz. The same great savings are available for titles in the Chicano Cinema and Media Arts Series: Los Four and Murals of Aztlán: The Street Painters of East Los Angeles, two documentaries by James Tartan; Laura Aguilar: Life, the Body, Her Perspective; No Movie, featuring the art of Gronk; video art from the 1980s and 1990s by Harry Gamboa Jr.; Frontierland/Fronterlandia: The Border in the Popular Imagination of the U.S. and Mexico, by Jesse Lerner and Rubén Ortiz Torres; and the first Chicano feature film, Please Don’t Bury Me Alive, by Efrain Gutiérrez. To order, email CSRC Press at support@chicano.ucla.edu or call (310) 825-3428. To view all CSRC titles, click here.

 

The UCLA Family Medicine Department is seeking qualified graduate students to serve as graduate student instructors (teaching associates or teaching fellows, as determined by level of experience) for the general education cluster course “Poverty and Health in Latin America” for the fall, winter, and spring quarters of the 2013–14 academic year. The course will be team taught by several faculty members from the following UCLA schools and departments: Urban Planning, School of Medicine, School of Public Health, Chicano Studies Research Center, and Latin American Studies. The course provides an introduction to the social determinants of health; focuses on the cultural, historical, socioeconomic, public health, medical, political, and artistic context of poverty in modern Latin America; and looks at the different responses to health inequities.

 

During the fall and winter quarters, graduate student instructors will attend lectures and assist faculty in preparation of the lecture portion of the course, as well as lead two-hour discussion sections. During the spring quarter, the graduate student instructors will be responsible for teaching a seminar on a topic related to the course material. These seminars will have an enrollment of about twenty students and will meet for three hours per week.

 

Graduate student instructors will:

 

To qualify for this position an applicant must have at least one year of previous experience but not more than nine quarters as a teaching assistant and must be enrolled as a graduate student in a UCLA school with candidacy to the following degrees: master’s, MD, or PhD. In addition, applicants must express a willingness to accept this appointment for the entire 2013–14 academic year. Preference will be given to candidates with educational and research experience related to health and/or Latin America. Experience that spans more than one relevant discipline (for example, public health and Latin America, or urban planning and Latin America) is a plus.

 

Interested students should submit a brief statement of their qualifications and CV (include references) by email to: Michael Rodriguez, MD, MPH, mrodriguez@mednet.ucla.edu

 

DEADLINE: Continuing until all positions are filled.