CSRC Newsletter - February 2019

On February 2, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, thereby indicating an early spring. We are all familiar with the observance of Groundhog Day, a Pennsylvania German custom that began in the eighteenth century, but we are not so familiar with another milestone that falls on the same date: the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Oddly, the two are connected. Until the early twentieth century German was the second most widely spoken language in the United States. Today it is Spanish, which has more speakers than all the other “foreign” languages combined. This shift started with the Treaty of Guadalupe, which, by ceding Mexican territory and establishing the southern border of Texas, transferred the northern half of Mexico to the United States. Interestingly, today the United States can be roughly divided into two geographical regions: the one that is the natural habitat for groundhogs, and the other that was “acquired” from Spain and Mexico. Our geography is as diverse as our demographics and cultural history. But we are one nation, a nation that looks to Punxsutawney Phil for signs of the coming spring and to the Southwest for our demographic and economic future. To see the early signs of that future, be sure to see two popular exhibitions supported by the CSRC: the La Raza exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West (closing next Sunday!) and Family, Community, Country: The Nell and Phil Soto Story at the CSRC Library, which has been extended through the end of March.

 

 

The CSRC is thrilled to be the recipient of the 2019 Excellence in Diversity Award from the College Art Association (CAA). Established in 2017, the award recognizes outstanding efforts by individuals or institutions in arts programming, projects, and/or scholarship to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega and associate director Charlene Villaseñor Black will accept the award in a ceremony at CAA’s annual conference, which will take place February 13–16 in New York City.

 

In 2018 the CSRC partnered with the UCLA Latino Politics and Policy Initiative to conduct the study Invisible No More: An Evaluation of the Smithsonian Institution and Latino Representation. Last month, US representative Joaquin Castro cited the study in a letter from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) to congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives. The CHCI letter recommended the appointment of US representative Lucille Roybal-Allard to the Smithsonian Board of Regents as one of its three regents from the House. Pelosi appointed Roybal-Allard to the position, making her the first Latina/o member of the board since California attorney general Xavier Becerra left his congressional seat in 2017. The CHCI is the non-profit fundraising organization of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which was co-founded in 1976 by US representative Edward R. Roybal, father of Lucille. The CSRC houses the Edward R. Roybal Papers. 

 

CSRC director Chon A. Noriega published the article “‘Emptiness Is Fullness’: Raphael Montañez Ortiz’s Early Destructivist Works, 1957-58” in the inaugural issue of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, released January 2019 from University of California Press. Charlene Villaseñor Black, professor of art history and CSRC associate director, is the journal’s editor-in-chief. Noriega is writing a monograph on the artist for the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series from CSRC Press.

 

Rocío R. García, doctoral candidate in the UCLA Department of Sociology, has been hired as assistant professor of sociology within the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University in Tempe. She will begin her appointment this fall. García is currently in the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) Mellon Fellows Program, which the CSRC brought to UCLA to provide support and mentorship to doctoral candidates in Latino studies whose research incorporates humanities-based methodologies. 

 

NBC News published an article examining recent use and the history of the word beaner. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega is quoted in the piece.

NBC News, February 1, 2019 (PDF)

 

CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was interviewed for a piece in the UCLA Daily Bruin in which he discusses the importance of UCLA’s four ethnic studies centers as they celebrate their fiftieth anniversary.

UCLA Daily Bruin, January 30, 2019 (PDF)

 

UCLA Newsroom published a piece highlighting the CSRC’s receipt of the 2019 Excellence in Diversity Award from the College Art Association. The story was also featured in the UCLA Newsroom’s weekly roundup of top stories.

UCLA Newsroom, January 22, 2019 (PDF)

UCLA Newsroom Weekly, January 25, 2019 (PDF)

 

CSRC director Chon A. Noriega is quoted in a piece discussing the film In Old Arizona (1929), the first “talkie” Western to be filmed entirely outdoors. This year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the film’s release.

Cinestaan, January 20, 2019 (PDF)

 

Artforum published a list of this year’s College Art Association Awards for Distinction recipients, including the CSRC.

Artforum, January 18, 2019 (PDF)

 

ARTnews published a list of this year’s College Art Association Awards for Distinction recipients, including the CSRC.

ARTnews, January 17, 2019 (PDF)

 

A College Art Association press release announced the 2019 Awards for Distinction recipients, including the CSRC.

CAA, January 17, 2019 (PDF)

 

Colin Gunckel, associate professor of screen arts and cultures at the University of Michigan and associate editor of the A Ver book series, and Laura Isabel Serna, associate professor of cinema and media studies at USC and a CSRC collections donor, wrote a post for the Film Comment blog that discusses their upcoming publication from CSRC Press on the creative writings of Gabriel Navarro, a Mexico-born journalist based in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s.

Film Comment, January 14, 2019 (PDF)

 

UC Riverside News published an article on the Critical Mission Studies at California’s Crossroads project, which was awarded $1 million in funding through UC’s 2019 Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives. The project is led by CSRC associate director Charlene Villaseñor Black.

UC Riverside News, January 10, 2019 (PDF)

 

CSRC director Chon A. Noriega is quoted in a piece in the Daily Bruin about the “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Statement” required of all prospective UCLA faculty. The policy was instated for the 2018-19 academic year.

Daily Bruin, January 8, 2019 (PDF)

 

UCLA Newsroom highlighted the IAC Film Festival, held in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures. The program featured films made by UCLA alumni that address cultural and social justice issues. The CSRC presented Requiem-29 (1971) and Chicana (1979) in the morning session, along with Selena (1997) as the festival’s feature presentation in the evening.

UCLA News, January 7, 2019 (PDF)

 

UCLA Newsroom reprinted a story by UCLA Magazine that highlights the fiftieth anniversary of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures (IAC) by examining current research being performed at UCLA's four ethnic studies research centers. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, who was interviewed for the piece, discusses the value of art and the CSRC’s research and academic programs to forwarding the IAC’s mission.

UCLA News, January 3, 2019 (PDF)

 

 

Join Los Angeles–based Chicana artist Sandy Rodriguez for a talk about Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón, a series of bioregional maps and paintings. Rodriguez replicated pre-Columbian pigments and paper to create Codex Rodriguez- Mondragón, which explores the geography and current political climate of the US Southwest and Mexico. The project is a response to the Florentine Codex, a sixteenth-century ethnographic study of Mesoamerican culture and history compiled by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Rodriguez will discuss how her project was conceived and how politics, botany, chemistry, interdisciplinary collaboration, civic engagement, and art history all had a role in its creation. A related limited-edition catalog with contributions by Charlene Villaseñor Black, Ella Diaz and Ananda Cohen-Aponte, Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, and Todd Wingate will be available for purchase.

 

 

Nate Capaldi, an activist and retired schoolteacher, has donated to the CSRC posters and prints related to Mechicano Art Center, art events, and Chicana/o theater groups and performances in the 1970s. Also included are materials from the 1970s and 1980s that pertain to US-Mexico border culture. A teacher in the La Puente area for almost forty years, Capaldi taught Mexican American history to his sixth-grade classes during the 1970s, which inspired him to collect memorabilia of the Chicano movement.

 

Collections donor Mimi Lozano, founder of the Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research and editor and publisher of Somos Primos, an online monthly publication dedicated to Hispanic heritage, has received a José Martí publishing award from the National Association of Hispanic Publications, Inc. Somos Primos received the silver award for Outstanding ePublication. Somos Primos is part of the CSRC’s Chicano Newspaper Collection. Lozano is the donor of the Nohemi Lozano Holtzman Papers and the John O. Leal Papers.

 

In January, CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores taught archival research instruction to forty-five students in CCS188, “Radical Women in Latin American Art.” Seventy students in HIS M186, “Global Feminism,” received information concerning CSRC resources related to key figures in Chicana feminism and the Chicano movement.

 

On January 31, Flores joined Erika Hirugami, founder and CEO of CuratorLove, for a roundtable discussion geared to students pursuing master’s degrees in art business or arts management from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in conjunction with the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. Flores spoke about her professional experience as it pertains to fine art. The CSRC archives and regularly loans artworks to gallery and museum exhibitions (see Exhibitions with CSRC Loans, below). The event was co-sponsored by the CSRC.

 

Family, Community, Country: The Nell and Phil Soto Story celebrates the lives and careers of Nell and Phil Soto. Both were pioneering Latino politicians who served in the California legislature and their local city councils and school districts. The Sotos promoted public health policies, green spaces and parks for children, protecting the environment and air quality, equal housing, and head-start education. Nell (1926–2009) and Phil (1926–1997) were also parents, raising six children, and active church members. The exhibition draws from the recently donated Nell and Phil Soto Papers and will be on view in the library and vitrine through the winter quarter. The exhibition is free to the public and viewable during library hours, Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

 

Sonidos de la Frontera: Music across Borders and Time, currently on view at the UCLA Music Library, highlights the Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings, the world’s largest repository of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican American musical recordings. The exhibition provides a gateway to the collection by using a fraction of the music in combination with material from more than a dozen of the CSRC’s archival collections to present significant moments in Mexican and Mexican American music history. Curated chiefly by CSRC archives specialist Doug Johnson, in collaboration with CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores and music inquiry and research librarian Matthew Vest, the exhibition includes photographs, posters, clippings, pamphlets, flyers, songbooks, and audio recordings in a variety of formats. CSRC collections represented in the exhibition include the Humberto Cané Papers, the Pedro J. Gonzalez Papers, and the Anthony Beltramo Collection. The exhibition, which is a collaboration between the Music and CSRC Libraries, will be on view outside the Music Library Reading Room at the Schoenberg Music Building through June 2019. The Music Library is open seven days a week during regular session. For hours, click here. An online version of Sonidos de la Frontera: Music across Borders and Time, featuring images of artifacts and links to recordings, is now available as a UCLA Library Research Guide. The recordings in the Frontera Collection are available to the public through the University of California’s Digital Library Program.

 

The following off-campus exhibitions currently on view include images and artworks from CSRC collections and publications:

 

 

The ongoing cultural and political connections between Chicana/o and Mexican history are the focus of The Aztlán Mexican Studies Reader, 1974-2016. Edited and introduced by Héctor Calderón, UCLA professor of Spanish and Portuguese, this collection of essays makes a rigorous case for the contributions of Chicana/o studies to the transnational study of Mexico. Included with the thirteen previously published pieces are three that were commissioned for this collection. The publication is volume 6 in the Aztlán Anthology series from CSRC Press and may be purchased through our distributor, University of Washington Press.

 

The CSRC is looking for a full-time business assistant! Under the direct supervision of the budget analyst, the business assistant will provide administrative fiscal support; act as a contact for customers and vendors for the CSRC Press; process time-reporting for biweekly and monthly employees; process purchases in BruinBuy, and other administrative duties as assigned. Ability to speak, read, and write Spanish is preferred. Ability to lift forty pounds is required. To apply, visit www.ucla.edu/about/careers and search for requisition 29547. Applications will be accepted through February 15, 2019.

 

The Institute of American Cultures (IAC) invites applications for support of research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicanas/os for 2019-2020. The Institute also invites proposals on interethnic relations that will increase collaboration between the UCLA ethnic studies research centers and/or between the centers and other campus units.

 

Eligibility Requirements:
UCLA faculty, staff, graduate students, and IAC visiting research scholars

 

Funding: The Research Grant Program is on a reimbursement-basis only. Funds for the purchase of permanent equipment will be provided only under exceptional circumstances. Conference travel, whether the applicant is presenting or attending, is not eligible.

 

Grant Period: July 1, 2019 through May 31, 2020.

 

Deadline: Applications must be received by 11:59 p.m., March 1, 2019. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. Applicants will be notified in May. Prior to submission of the application, applicants should briefly discuss their proposal with the coordinator of the appropriate center, or in the case of interethnic proposals, with each applicable center. All grant recipients, where appropriate, must comply with UCLA’s Protection of Human Subjects in Research before receiving funding.

 

Apply: The application is available online at https://sa.ucla.edu/IAC/ResearchGrant

 

For further information, please contact the coordinator of the appropriate UCLA Ethnic Studies Research Center.