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CSRC Newsletter - January 2019

VOlume 17, Number 4

Director’s Message

Happy New Year! We’ve started the year with a bang. Kudos to CSRC associate director Charlene Villaseñor Black and to CSRC Faculty Advisory Board member Abel Valenzuela for receiving collaborative grants to study the California missions and to showcase the role of UCLA in creating “change leaders” for diversity, respectively. Their work is crucial to reimagining the American story as one that has been diverse from the start, and CSRC is proud to play a role in these projects. [See News below.] Thanks also to CSRC friend Tamar Diana Wilson for a recent gift in support of a conference/encuentro on asylum seekers from Central America, which will involve faculty, students, and activists who are fighting on the front lines for human rights. Wilson supported an effort in 2015 related to Central American refugees in detention and established the Tamar Diana Wilson Fund to support students and the study of urban poverty as it relates to Latinos, Mexicans, and Central American indigenous populations. Finally, be sure to join us as we kick off the ethnic studies research centers’ fiftieth anniversary (and the UCLA Centennial) with the IAC Film Festival: Celebrating 50 Years of Ethnic Stories on Screen by UCLA Alumni. Featured Bruin filmmakers include Moctesuma Esparza and Sylvia Morales. As these faculty and alumni have shown, we can all make a difference, and it starts with research.
 
Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

News

CSRC awarded $1.03 million grant for California missions study
The CSRC-based research project “Critical Mission Studies at California’s Crossroads” has received a $1.03 million grant from the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI). The award was announced in December. Charlene Villaseñor Black, CSRC associate director and professor of art history and Chicana/o studies, is the lead principal investigator on the project, which reconsiders California’s twenty-one Spanish-Indian missions. Research labs will be established at CSRC, UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz, and UC San Diego, where faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, national and international experts, and community partners will draw on the academic disciplines of Native American, Chicana/o, California, and Mexican studies to create an inclusive narrative of California history. Research sites will include state archives, the missions, and surrounding communities. One of sixteen projects selected from a pool of 179 submissions, “Critical Mission Studies at California’s Crossroads” is the only one that will be led at UCLA. In addition to Villaseñor Black, the principal investigators on the project are Jennifer Hughes, associate professor of history, UC Riverside; Amy Lonetree, associate professor of history, UC Santa Cruz; and Ross H. Frank, associate professor of ethnic studies, UC San Diego. This two-year project will run from 2019 through 2020.
 
CSRC to partner on Centennial Celebration project
For UCLA’s upcoming Centennial Celebration in 2019-20, the CSRC will contribute to “UCLA: Opening Doors and Developing Change Leaders for the Next Centennial,” a project to develop a multimedia traveling exhibition that will showcase the role of UCLA and its alumni in advancing equity and equality in America. The exhibition will feature the stories of Bruins both past and present who have advanced and shaped social justice movements. The project is one of four selected by the Centennial Celebration’s steering committee from more than forty proposed initiatives. The project will be led by the IRLE, which is directed by Abel Valenzuela, professor of Chicana/o studies and urban planning and CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee member. In addition to the CSRC, partners on the project are the Labor Center, the Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Immigration Policy, the Institute of American Cultures, the American Indian Studies Center, the Asian American Studies Center, and the Bunche Center for African American Studies.
 
Noriega co-edits new book on Chicana/o art
CSRC director Chon A. Noriega co-edited Chicana and Chicano Art: A Critical Anthology, to be published next month by Duke University Press. The anthology charts Chicana/o art from its role in the Chicano movement of the 1960s to its presence today in mainstream art institutions. The book, which includes foundational texts and manifestos alongside essays by artists, curators, and cultural critics, engages current debate on the visibility and importance of Chicana/o art. Jennifer A. González, C. Ondine Chavoya, and Terezita Romo co-edited the volume with Noriega.  The introduction can be downloaded here. González, professor of art history and visual culture at UC Santa Cruz, is the author of Pepón Osorio, volume 9 in the A Ver series from CSRC Press. Romo is a curator and author of Malaquias Montoya, volume 6 in the A Ver series. Chavoya, professor of art and Latina/o studies at Williams College, has been a CSRC visiting scholar on two occasions, conducting research for the influential exhibitions Asco: Elite of the Obscure, 1972–1987 and Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A.
 
Noriega essay reprinted in Cinema Journal retrospective
The essay “‘Something’s Missing Here!’: Homosexuality and Film Reviews during the Production Code Era, 1934–1962,” by Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director and professor of cinema and media studies, was reprinted in the Fall 2018 issue of JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, formerly known as Cinema Journal. For this special retrospective issue, essays from 1984 to 2014 were selected to show the publication’s influence on the field. The entire issue can be viewed on Project Muse, here.
 
Pérez wins two fellowships
Roy Pérez, the 2018-19 Institute of American Cultures visiting scholar at the CSRC and associate professor of English and ethnic studies at Willamette University, has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS) at the CUNY Graduate Center. Both fellowships are to support the completion of Pérez’s manuscript, “Proximities: Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Latina/o Literature and Performance Since 1960.” The CLAGS committee recognized Pérez’s work as having the potential to make an original contribution in the field of queer Latinx studies, especially in regard to discourse on comparative racialization, performance, and cultural productions. 
 
Barreto publishes op-ed in The New York Times
On December 18, Matt A. Barreto, professor of political science and Chicana/o studies, published the op-ed “Trump Thinks He’s Still Winning on Immigration; Never Mind What the Election Results Say” in The New York Times. Barreto is a member of the CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee, and he partnered on the study Invisible No More, published by the CSRC and the UCLA Latino Politics and Policy Initiative. The op-ed can be read here.
 
Cárdenas wins CIFO award
Colombian artist Leyla Cárdenas is one of nine recipients of the 2019 CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Award presented by the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation. Cárdenas’s project is a video installation that examines what she calls the “ghostly connotations” of architectural vestiges and natural geology in which human history is played out. The nine commissioned works will be shown this fall at El Museo del Barrio in New York. Cárdenas's work was featured in the CSRC-organized exhibition Home—So Different, So Appealing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2017–18) and in CSRC-organized installations at the 2018 LA Art Show.
 
Aguilar named in memorial tribute to unforgettable artists
An article on Artsy.net named Laura Aguilar among artists who died in 2018 who left behind timeless work. The article mentions the retrospective Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, which the Vincent Price Art Museum developed in collaboration with the CSRC as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. The article can be viewed here.
 
New video on CSRC YouTube
  • Archival Donation and Talk: Mario T. García and Rosalío Muñoz in Conversation (December 6, 2018) (video) The CSRC celebrated the donation to the CSRC Library of an oral history collection assembled by Mario T. García, professor of Chicana/o studies at UC Santa Barbara, by hosting a public conversation between García and Chicano activist Rosalío Muñoz. Muñoz was the first Mexican American to be elected student body president at UCLA, and he served as co-chair of the Chicano Moratorium Committee. The two discussed how Muñoz’s oral history contributed to García’s book The Chicano Generation: Testimonios of the Movement (2015, University of California Press). Carlos M. Haro, CSRC assistant director emeritus, introduced the event.

CSRC in the News

“Permanent Latinx Gallery Planned at Smithsonian”
An article in NonProfit Quarterly about a new permanent gallery dedicated to the Latinx experience at the Smithsonian referred to Invisible No More: An Evaluation of the Smithsonian Institution and Latino Representation, a 2018 study coproduced by the CSRC and the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.
NonProfit Quarterly, December 17, 2018 (PDF)
 
“More than $9M in Research Grants Awarded to UC Campuses to Address California’s Critical Issues”
“Critical Mission Studies at California's Crossroads,” a two-year research project led by CSRC associate director Charlene Villaseñor Black, is among the projects described in a press release about grants awarded by UC’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI). Villaseñor Black and co-investigators from the Riverside, Santa Cruz, and San Diego campuses will create a new, multidimensional narrative of California history that includes the voices and perspectives of the Native American and Mexican American communities that helped lay the foundation for the state’s development.  
University of California Press Room, December 17, 2018 (PDF)
 
“Society, Struggle, Scholarship”
UCLA Magazine highlighted the fiftieth anniversary of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures (IAC), examining current research being performed at UCLA's four ethnic studies research centers. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega, who was interviewed for the piece, discussed the value of art and the CSRC’s research and academic programs to forwarding the IAC’s mission.
UCLA Magazine, December 14, 2018 (PDF)
 
“The Artist America Built: Daniel Joseph Martinez Visits Other Places and Other Histories in His Ongoing Critique of These United States”
An article featured in ARTnews examined the influences and career of artist Daniel Joseph Martinez. Martinez’s work was included in the CSRC-organized exhibition Home—So Different, So Appealing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2017 and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2017-18.
ARTnews, December 11, 2018 (PDF)
 
“Anthology of Latino Speculative Fiction Co-edited by UCSB Scholar Wins an American Book Award”
The Current reported that Altermundos: Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture won a 2018 American Book Award. Altermundos was co-edited by Ben Olguín, professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, and Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson, assistant professor of Mexican American studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. The book was published by CSRC Press.
The Current, December 3, 2018 (PDF)
 
All “In the News” articles are available in PDF format on the CSRC website.
 

Events

Book Talk: Danielle Clealand presents The Power of Race in Cuba: Racial Ideology and Black Consciousness during the Revolution
Thursday, January 10, 12:00–2:00 p.m. (Lunch served at noon; lecture begins at 12:30 p.m.)
Black Forum–153 Haines Hall
The inaugural bi-annual Mark Q. Sawyer Memorial Lecture in Racial and Ethnic Politics will be given by Danielle Clealand, assistant professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University. Clealand will discuss The Power of Race in Cuba: Racial Ideology and Black Consciousness during the Revolution (Oxford UP, 2017), for which she received the 2018 Best Book Award from the Race, Ethnicity and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The goal of the Mark Q. Sawyer Memorial Lecture is to highlight the outstanding research of an advanced assistant or associate professor whose work focuses on racial and ethnic politics in the United States and internationally. The lecture is part of the Department of Political Science’s Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Workshop series and is co-sponsored by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies with support from the Bunche Community Fund, the Department of African American Studies, and the CSRC. Please RSVP here.
 
IAC Film Festival: Celebrating 50 Years of Ethnic Stories on Screen by UCLA Alumni
Friday, February 1, 11:30 a.m.–10:00 p.m.
James West Alumni Center
325 Westwood Plaza, UCLA
In 2019, the UCLA Institute of American Cultures (IAC) and its four ethnic studies centers—American Indian Studies Center, Asian American Studies Center, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, and the CSRC—will celebrate five decades of producing groundbreaking research about the changing social and cultural realities in America. The yearlong celebration will open with a film festival on Friday, February 1, that will present features, documentaries, and shorts made by UCLA alumni. These thought-provoking and entertaining films tackle cultural and social-justice issues. Q&A sessions with the films’ writers, directors, and producers will follow. In addition to the screenings, attendees are invited to enjoy ethnic food, entertainment, and a chance to mingle with filmmakers. Free to the public. For the program schedule and to RSVP, see Eventbrite.
 
All CSRC events are free and do not require an RSVP unless otherwise noted. Programs are subject to change. For the most current information, visit the Events page on the CSRC website.
 

CSRC Library

New collections received
  • Artist Deborah Aschheim has donated posters from her “Time Travel” series, inspired by the 1968 student walkouts, to the CSRC Poster Collection. Drawings for the posters were based on images in the CSRC’s La Raza Photograph Collection. The posters were part of a public art project and exhibited on Pasadena Transit buses and bus stop shelters last May. The project was supported by a grant from the city of Pasadena.
  • Mario T. García, professor of Chicana/o studies at UCSB, has donated twenty-four audiocassettes of interviews he conducted with Rosalío Muñoz. The interviews were incorporated into García’s book The Chicano Generation: Testimonios of the Movement (UC Press, 2015). The tapes, which will be available as part of the Mario T. García Papers, were donated at an event in December that was recorded for CSRC YouTube (see News).
Additions to existing collections
  • Mark Santarelli added materials to the Mark Santarelli and Linda Arreola Collection of Magú Materials. Additions include production notes, correspondence, and business documents that provide insight into the creation of the film Magu: Portrait of an Artist, which is archived at the CSRC. The finding aid for materials processed to date can be found here.
  • On behalf of Father Gregory Boyle, Laura Miera donated five linear feet of Boyle’s personal papers, which will be added to the Homeboy Industries Records.
Homeboy Industries Records processed
The processing of the Homeboy Industries Records is now complete, pending further additions. Founded by Father Greg Boyle, Homeboy Industries, an outgrowth of a former program called Jobs for a Future, provides job training and other services for at-risk youth hoping to escape gang culture. The bulk of the collection spans 1991 to 2013 and consists largely of letters from Homeboy clients to Father Boyle. Many of the letters were written from prison and, in the aggregate, offer a candid and wide-ranging view of a voiceless population subjugated by the carceral state. The collection also includes administrative records and some of Father Boyle’s personal materials. Homeboy Industries and Father Boyle continue to donate material to the CSRC, so the collection will continue to expand. The most current finding aid is available on the Online Archive of California.
 
Sonidos de la Frontera exhibition continues
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.
 
Exhibitions with CSRC loans
The following off-campus exhibitions on view in January include images and artworks from CSRC collections and publications:
 
To schedule a tour of the CSRC Library, contact CSRC librarian Xaviera Flores at xflores@chicano.ucla.edu or fill out the form on the CSRC Library Services page.
 

CSRC Press

Aztlán, the premier journal of Chicana/o studies, is inviting new submissions! Aztlán publishes scholarship relevant to Chicana/o studies from all disciplines and interdisciplinary research as well. We welcome submissions in English and Spanish. We are seeking submissions for all three areas of the journal:
 
Essays
Our essays are research-based and come from a wide variety of disciplines—literature, sociology, history, political science, the arts, linguistics, gender studies, ethnic studies, and many other fields—but they always engage the Chicana/o experience. All essays are peer reviewed and are frequently revised to meet the journal’s standards for quality research. Essays typically run about 10,000–12,000 words in length.
 
Dossiers
The dossier section provides a forum for multiple and shorter engagements with a specific theme that examines an aspect of Chicana/o studies; this might be an object of study, theoretical or disciplinary questions, a methodology, or one scholar’s work. The dossier section, while still of a scholarly nature, is designed to be exploratory, provocative, or experimental in approach. Aztlán will consider working with a guest curator—a scholar who wishes to create a dossier theme and can help manage dossier development. Contact Heather Birdsall at hbirdsall@chicano.ucla.edu to explore this opportunity.
 
Book Reviews
If you are interested in writing a book review for us, we will gladly consider suggested titles, or we can recommend a book that matches your field of interest. To inquire about reviews, contact our book review coordinator at revieweditor@chicano.ucla.edu.
 
To submit: All submissions should be sent to our submission inbox at submissions@chicano.ucla.edu. For complete information about Aztlán and our submission guidelines, please visit the CSRC website. Please direct queries to Heather Birdsall, assistant editor, at hbirdsall@chicano.ucla.edu. 
 

Opportunities

UCLA IAC Visiting Research Scholar Fellowship Program in Ethnic Studies, 2019-20 
The UCLA Institute of American Cultures offers in-residence appointments to support research on African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Chicana/os. We especially encourage applications that advance our understanding of new social and cultural realities occasioned by the dramatic population shifts of recent decades, including greater heterogeneity within ethnic groups and increased interethnic contact.
 
The 2019-20 IAC Visiting Research Scholar will receive funding for one or more quarters and may receive up to $35,000 for three quarters (contingent upon rank, experience, and date of completion of their terminal degree). In the event that an award is for less than three quarters or a nine-month appointment, the funds will be prorated in accordance with the actual length of the award. The Visiting Research Scholar must have a home institution. Visiting Research Scholar funds will be paid through the successful candidate’s home institution, and she/he will be expected to continue her/his health insurance through that source. Award funding can be used to supplement sabbatical support for a total that does not exceed the candidate’s current institutional salary. Awardees may receive up to $4,000 in research support. The Bunche Center for African American Studies will not have a Visiting Research Scholar in 2019-20.
 
Eligibility: Applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States and hold a Ph.D. from an accredited college or university (or, in the case of the arts, an appropriate terminal degree) in a relevant field at the time of appointment. UCLA faculty, staff, and currently enrolled students are not eligible to apply.
 
Deadline: Completed applications must be received by 11:59 p.m. on January 10, 2019. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. Applicants will be notified in March. In the Upload Documents section of the application, please upload a blank document instead of a Course Description as this requirement is being waived.

Application: The application is available online at: https://sa.ucla.edu/IAC/VisitingScholar 
 
Click here for a preview of the application pages. 
 
 
IUPLR/UIC Mellon Fellowship Program, 2019-20
The Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) Mellon Fellowship supports doctoral students in the humanities who are writing dissertations in Latina/o studies. Doctoral students in the social sciences whose research uses humanities methods may also be considered. The fellowship facilitates completion of the dissertation and provides professional development, writing support, and mentoring from faculty members in Latino studies. The fellowship includes a $25,000 stipend, participation in an intensive summer institute in Chicago, and professionalization and writing workshops and programs.
 
Eligibility: Applicants are required to meet with the director of their center before they apply to assess eligibility and obtain a letter of recognition to submit with their application. Applicants must have advanced to candidacy (ABD status with defended proposal) and be completing a Latino studies dissertation in the humanities or in a humanities-adjacent discipline. Applicants should already have a significant portion of the dissertation drafted and anticipate defending their dissertation by the end of the fellowship year. Finally, applicants should be planning to pursue an academic career in teaching and/or research. 
 
During the fellowship year, students must be enrolled at their home institution. Fellows will be expected to forego other employment during the year. Selected fellows are required to attend the one-week IUPLR/Mellon Summer Institute in late summer 2019 in Chicago, attend and present at IUPLR conferences (in select years), and take part in a very structured writing program.
 
IUPLR will select fellows through six designated research centers:
Deadline: Submit the following materials by January 30, 2019 to the online portal: https://mfp.lals.uic.edu
  • CV
  • Cover letter that describes your dissertation, timeline to completion, and your professional goals
  • Completed chapters compiled in a single PDF. Include as a cover page a one-page outline with chapter titles, brief chapter summaries, and the percentage of each chapter completed. If you do not have any writing completed, you may submit only the outline
  • Two recommendation letters (one from the applicant’s dissertation chair and one from a Latina/o studies faculty member) sent to jlboles@uic.edu
  • Letter of recognition from the Director of the IUPLR center or Fellowship Coordinator at the applicant’s home institution, to be sent to jlboles@uic.edu %20
*UCLA students: Please contact Rebecca Epstein, CSRC assistant director, at repstein@chicano.ucla.eduor (310) 206-9185.