CSRC Newsletter - April 2011

Volume 9, Number 8

Director's Message

Libraries! While the CSRC was opening its newly renovated library as a unique resource for students, community members, and scholars from around the world (see below), UCLA was receiving worldwide media attention for student Alexandra Wallace’s now infamous YouTube rant, “Asians in the Library.” The video drew an immediate and sharp rebuke from UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. The student, who removed the posting and apologized, received threats and withdrew from the university. So what have we learned? The first lesson is that libraries remain important sites for education: as library patrons we encounter not just a collection of resources but other people as well, and we must learn to learn from both. The CSRC Library has hosted scholars from Finland, England, Italy, Tunisia, and Japan, among other places. Even from Mexico! Knowledge begins with difference. The second lesson is that social media has transformed the way we communicate: exchanges that were once private can now be made into instantaneous and public spectacles. But UCLA’s curriculum has not caught up to that new normal, and we are not preparing our students for the mediated social environment they must navigate. Digital natives such as Ms. Wallace have no prior experience with the once sacred divide between public and private. Although she removed her posting, it will live on forever, and prospective employers will know about it once they Google her name. The third lesson is the one most frequently overlooked in this entire incident: Ms. Wallace was a student—our student—and students make mistakes. That is part of the learning process. Otherwise we would not grade them! Our job as educators is to create and sustain a learning environment—a community, if you will—and to guide students through the difficult and necessary process of learning to learn from books, from other people, and from sitting in a library. Ms. Wallace’s video should not be considered as something alien to the UCLA community. To do so is to fool ourselves about the complicated state of “diversity” on the campus and to deny ourselves any opportunity to learn from the inevitable mistakes that can and will happen. The video should be acknowledged as a mistake, and as an offense to Asian Americans, but it should also be seen as a learning opportunity. It behooves us to ponder how we might have made the best of that opportunity, and how that student mighthave been part of such a process.
 
Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

News

Welcome, Connie
The CSRC welcomes Connie Heskett, the center’s new management services officer. Ms. Heskett comes to the CSRC from the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. Her office is in 183 Haines Hall.
 
Ethnic Studies Centers Honored
The CSRC and UCLA’s three other ethnic studies centers were honored by the Los Angeles City Council on February 25. A proclamation was presented by Councilwoman Jan Perry to representatives from the centers. Representing the CSRC was Carlos M. Haro, CSRC postdoctoral visiting scholar and former CSRC associate director. The honor marked the fortieth anniversary of the centers, which was celebrated last year.
 
Conference Presentation
Maria Elena Ruiz, CSRC associate director and assistant adjunct professor at UCLA’s School of Nursing, presented “Latinos Aging in Skid Row: Unraveling Stories of Physical and Mental Health Needs” at the L.A. Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (LANAHN) Annual Conference on March 4. She was joined by nursing students Sabrina Escalante, Alejandro Ramirez, Julieta Popovic, and Michelle Kim, who assisted Dr. Ruiz on the project.
 
MALDEF Youth Program
On Saturday, April 16, the CSRC Library will host sixty high school students and their parents. Lizette Guerra, CSRC librarian, will give a presentation about the importance of Chicana/o scholarship and higher education, and the group will explore works by artists who use art as a tool for activism. The visit is part of MALDEF’s “Connecting Communities to UCLA,” a program designed to facilitate access to higher education for members of local communities.
 
Upcoming Exhibition
An exhibition of works by Linda Vallejo, Make 'Em All Mexican, will open on May 14 at Ave 50 Studio in Highland Park. The exhibition is curated by Karen Mary Davalos, associate professor of Chicana/o studies at Loyola Marymount University. Dr. Davalos is a member of the CSRC’s research team for L.A. Xicano, a four-exhibition project opening in Fall 2011. Ms. Vallejo’s work will be shown in the L.A. Xicano exhibition at the Fowler Museum, which is co-curated by Chon A. Noriega, Pilar Tompkins Rivas, and Terezita Romo. L.A. Xicano is a component of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.
 
Freddy Rodriguez
A Ver artist Freddy Rodriguez was featured in “Arte y Cultura de República Dominicana en Nueva York,” a cable TV program about the Dominican community in New York City. The program aired in March on CUNY TV, a cable channel operated by the City University of New York. The video can be viewed at the CUNY TV website. On March 26 Mr. Rodriguez gave a bilingual presentation at Río Gallery II in New York City as part of the gallery’s series “Hablemos de Arte XIII.” The presentation focused on his art and career in the United States.
 
A Ver Artist-in-Residence
A Ver artist Carmen Lomas Garza will be the artist-in-residence at the deYoung Museum’s Kimball Education Gallery from Friday, March 30, through Sunday, May 1. The museum is located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Visitors will be able to interact with the artist while viewing a solo exhibition that will include paintings, prints, and paper and metal cutouts. Carmen Lomas Garza, authored by Constance Cortez and published by the CSRC Press last year, will be available in the museum’s bookstore. The book is volume 5 of the A Ver series.
 

CSRC in the News

“María Brito and Her Anxious Interiors,” a review of Maria Brito (volume 4 of the A Ver series), was published by Arte al Dia on March 23. The reviewer notes that the book, authored by Juan A. Martínez, “conveys to the viewer a revealing vision of the dimension of her work, but also the conviction that no artist is an island” and concludes that the book is a “contribution to the ongoing construction of a less hegemonic and more inclusive history of art.” The reviewer also notes the foreword by Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director. Artist and book are also featured in “A Ver,” the cover story of the spring edition of FIU Magazine, the flagship publication of Florida International University.
 
The reopening of the CSRC Library was reported in La Gente on March 11; the article notes that the newly renovated facility represents “the progression of Chicano studies.” The article quotes Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director.
 
A talk sponsored by the CSRC by Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, on January 26 was recently reported by La Gente. After speaking to the capacity audience, Father Boyle signed copies of his new book, Tattoos on the Heart.
 
A news item in UCLA Today on March 10 noted the proclamation presented to the CSRC by the Los Angeles City Council (see above).
 
On March 7 La Bloga, a blog dedicated to news about Chicana/o and Latina/o writers and literature, reported on recent happenings at the CSRC in a posting titled “News from the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.”
An opinion piece by Alvaro Huerta, CSRC visiting scholar, “City Planning Must Factor in Immigrant and Other Low-Wage Workers,” appeared on March 15 in the Berkeley Blog. Mr. Huerta calls on planners to take the needs of low-wage workers into account, particularly in regard to public transportation. The piece also appeared in The New Planner, published by the American Planning Association, under the title “Advocating for the Immigrant Domestic Work Force: Recommendations for Planners.” The March 28 issue of the Los Angeles Business Journal featured another article by Mr. Huerta, “Keeping Community in Development.” Mr. Huerta makes a case for maintaining funding for the California Redevelopment Agency, which may be eliminated in the effort to balance the state’s budget. The piece also appeared in the March 28 online edition of The Daily Bruin under the title “Gov. Brown Shouldn’t Balance the State Budget on the Backs of California’s Most Vulnerable Citizens”; the article appeared in the Bruin’s print edition as “Cutting Redevelopment Is Not the Answer to the Budget Problem.”
 
PDFs of all articles are available on the CSRC website.
 

Events

Performance at Disney Concert Hall
The CSRC is a co-sponsor of “Sounds About Town: A Celebration of World Music,” a concert by the UCLA Philharmonia on Saturday, April 16, 8:00 p.m., at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The event is presented by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and The Latino Museum of History, Art, and Culture. Discounted tickets may be purchased by calling the UCLA Central Ticket office at (310) 825-2101. Tickets cannot be purchased online.
 
Book Launch
On Monday, April 18, the CSRC and MALDEF will celebrate the release of The Center Theatre Group/Latino Theatre Initiative Papers, 1980–2005, volume 4 of the CSRC Press’s Chicano Archives series. Chantal Rodriguez drew on the CSRC’s extensive collection of Latino Theatre Initiative papers to author the book’s essay, which is the first extended historical account of the program. The event will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the Edison Room at MALDEF, 634 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles. Books will be available for sale and signing. Parking across the street or nearby is $6.00. Please RSVP to Matthew Barragan: mbarragan@maldef.org. For more information, e-mail csrcinfo@chicano.ucla.edu.
 
Book Talk and Signing
Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores will discuss and sign their new book, The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, on Thursday, April 21, 12:00–2:00 p.m., in the CSRC Library (144 Haines Hall). The volume contains essays that explore culture, ethnicity, nation, identity, and antiracist politics. Dr. Román is executive director of the Afrolatin@ Forum; Dr. Flores is a professor at New York University. The lecture will be followed by a reception. Sponsors are, in addition to the CSRC, the Bunche Center, Latin American Institute, the Asian American Studies Center, and the Cuba and the Caribbean Working Group.
 
Aztec Sacrifice Lecture
The UCLA Center for the Study of Religion presents “City of Ritual and Sacrifice: Aztec Empire/Aztec Rule,” a lecture by Davíd Carrasco, on Tuesday, April 26, 12:00–1:30 p.m., in 314 Royce Hall. Dr. Carrasco, a professor at the Harvard Divinity School, will discuss the Aztec ritual of “Feast of the Flaying of Men,” in which captured warriors were paraded in the ceremonial centers of Tenochtitlan before they were sacrificed. He will also discuss recent theories of sacrifice and sacred violence and illustrate recent discoveries from the excavation of the Aztec Templo Mayor. The CSRC is co-sponsoring the event.
 
Film Screening
The CSRC will host a screening of I Know a Woman Like That on Tuesday, April 26, 4:00–6:00 p.m., in the CSRC Library (144 Haines Hall). The screening will be followed by a discussion with mother-and-daughter filmmakers Elaine and Virginia Madsen. The film, which Roger Ebert called “transformative,” features interviews with women over 65 who demonstrate a “new way to be old.” One of the interviews is with Lupe Anguiano, whose papers are archived at the CSRC Library. For more information about the film, visit the film’s website.
 
Festival of Books
Visit the CSRC Press at the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which will be held Saturday, April 30, and Sunday, May 1. This year the event will be at the University of Southern California. The CSRC Press booth will be in area T3 #132. We’ll have new books, DVDs, and our ever-popular T-shirts for sale. For more information and a link to a map of USC, go to the festival’s website.
 
Save the Date
On Wednesday, May 4, 4:00–6:00 p.m., the CSRC will host a book discussion and signing to celebrate two new publications co-edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba: Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera, edited with Georgina Guzmán (University of Texas Press, 2010), and Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s “Irreverent Apparition,” edited with Alma López (University of Texas Press, 2011). Dr. Gaspar de Alba is a professor of Chicana/o studies and CSRC affiliated faculty. The event will be held in the CSRC Library (144 Haines Hall).
 
Latino Education Summit 2011
The CSRC’s Sixth Annual Latina/o Education Summit, “Building on Our Assets: Language, Culture, and Education,” will take place on Friday, May 6, 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m., at the UCLA Faculty Center. This year’s conference is a collaborative effort between the CSRC and UCLA’s Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. Presentations will focus on a significantly different approach to the education of Latina/o students: viewing their language and culture as assets that schools can use to build success. Joining UCLA researchers will be scholars representing the University of Arizona, Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and San Jose State University. Visit the CSRC website for more information and to register online.
 
ALMS Conference
The third annual ALMS conference, “Archives, Libraries, Museums, and Special Collections: An LGBT International Conference,” will take place from Thursday, May 12, through Sunday, May 15, at Plummer Park in West Hollywood. The conference will focus on the public, private, academic, and grassroots archives that collect and preserve materials from LGBT communities. The LGBT and Mujeres Initiatives, a CSRC project established to increase LGBT and women’s archival collections, will be highlighted during a site visit to the CSRC Library on Friday, May 13. The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives is organizing the conference. Sponsors include the CSRC, the UCLA Library, the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, ONE Archives, and the City of West Hollywood. For more information and to register, visit the conference website.
 

Opportunities

Getty Internship
Each year the CSRC participates in the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program. Internships are structured around current and ongoing CSRC archival projects in the arts. Aside from contributing to the CSRC’s mission to provide information resources on Chicano history and culture, interns gain career-relevant archival experience, assisting staff with metadata entry for the CSRC Library’s digital art collections. Please submit your resume and cover letter via e-mail to CSRC librarian Lizette Guerra (lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu) by Friday, May 6. For details about the internship visit the Getty website.
 
Call for Grant Applications
The CSRC, in conjunction with the IAC, is offering research grants in support of projects dealing with Chicano and Latino issues for the 2010–11 academic year. Applicants whose projects additionally focus on urban poverty and poverty alleviation may also apply for a grant from the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund by checking both boxes on the application. Submit completed hard-copy applications to Javier Iribarren, CSRC assistant director, 193 Haines Hall. The deadline is Friday, April 22, at 5:00 p.m. Visit the IAC website for more details and the application form. Please send questions to Dr. Iribarren at jiribarren@chicano.ucla.edu
 

CSRC Library and Archive

Library Has Reopened
We are glad to announce that the library renovation has been completed, and the library is now open Monday through Friday, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Videos from the reopening event last month are available on the CSRC’s iTunesU page. To watch, follow the “Event Videos” link on the CSRC website; shorter clips are available on the CSRC’s YouTube site. For research assistance, please contact the CSRC librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.
 
Library Commemorates César E. Chávez
The CSRC will honor César Chávez’s life and work in an exhibit located at the CSRC Library, 144 Haines Hall. The labor leader, who died in 1993, is honored on March 31, a legal holiday in California and several other states. Mr. Chávez was a co-founder (with Dolores Huerta) of the National Farm Workers Association, which merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form what became the United Farm Workers. Mr. Chávez led a historic nonviolent movement for farm workers’ rights that began in the 1960s. He organized a boycott of table grapes that eventually resulted in a contract with major grape growers in California and get-out-the-vote drives that led to an increased number of Latina and Latinos in elected offices. His dedication to workers’ rights inspired a generation of activists who have used their skills in other struggles. The United Farm Workers of America has launched a campaign to honor Mr. Chávez’s message of fairness and dignity via innovative social media. To participate, go to the UFW’s Facebook page and click on the “like” button, or visit the UFW website.
 
Archival Access
The CSRC Library has tested and implemented a new online Archival Research Request Application, which streamlines and formalizes requests for access to CSRC special collections. The procedure insures that researchers receive materials in a timely and systematic way. The application process has proven to be very successful, and since January the library has processed fifteen requests for archival materials.
 
Latinopia.com
Jesús Salvador Treviño has announced the launch of Latinopia.com, a website designed as a “one-stop web destination for all things Latino.” The website offers short videos on art, literature, theater, television and cinema, history, and food. Mr. Treviño donated master tapes and scripts for his Resurrection Boulevard to the CSRC Library archive in 2010, and a 35 mm print of Mr. Treviño’s Raices de Sangre was donated to the library by the Mexican Cultural Institute in 2005.
 
NACCS Conference
The CSRC is participating in this year’s National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Conference, which takes place from March 31 to April 2 in Pasadena. Lizette Guerra, CSRC archivist and librarian, will discuss the importance of preserving Chicana and Chicano memory through the archival record during a panel titled “Chicana/o Archives and the Chicano Movement: A Discussion.” Other panelists are Richard Griswold del Castillo, professor at San Diego State University (SDSU) and chair of the SDSU Chicana/o Archives project; Rita Sanchez, professor at San Diego Mesa College and co-chair of the Chicana/o Archives project; and Romelia Salinas, librarian at California State University, Los Angeles.
 

CSRC Press

María Brito Presentation
A talk by Juan A. Martínez at New York’s Museo del Barrio focused on the work of María Brito and Dr. Martínez’s award-winning book, María Brito. The book, volume 4 in the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series, was published by CSRC Press in 2009. The talk was given in conjunction with the annual meeting of the College Art Association, February 9–12. Reviews of María Brito are available on the CSRC website.
 

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