CSRC Newsletter - June 2012

Volume 10, Number 10

Director's Message

Last month, the Census Bureau reported that of all births in the United States between July 2010 and July 2011, 50.4 percent were children born to Latino, Asian, African American, or mixed-race parents. In fact, as described by Rebecca Trounson in the Los Angeles Times, minorities accounted for more than 92 percent of the nation’s population growth between 2000 and 2010! Latinos are the most populous minority, with 52 million people in 2011, and the number of Latino births in the United States was greater than the number of arriving Latino immigrants. A study conducted by the UCLA Latinos and Economic Security research group found that Latinos will account for 100 percent of the growth in the working-age population over the next two decades. California, of course, has been anticipating this demographic shift for decades; in 1985 the number of minority births exceeded those of whites, and in 1999 California became the first “minority-majority” state in the nation. With 60.3 percent of its population classified as minority in 2011, California has the potential to serve as a model for a new type of multiethnic nation. But this can happen only if we start acknowledging that “minority” is a misnomer, and that governmental agencies, newspapers, and other social institutions need a new language for describing the emerging America.
 
Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

News

L.A. Xicano wins IPPY gold
The L.A. Xicano exhibition catalog, edited by Chon A. Noriega, Terezita Romo, and Pilar Tompkins Rivas, has received a gold medal in the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards—the IPPY Awards—in the category “West–Pacific: Best Regional Non-Fiction.” The Getty publication Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art, 1945–1980, which includes several illustrations provided by the CSRC, received a gold medal in the national category for fine art publications. Conducted each year to honor the year's best independently published books, the IPPY Awards recognize excellence in a broad range of subjects and reward authors and publishers who take chances and break new ground. The IPPY Awards are presented by Independent Publisher. Winners will be celebrated June 4 in New York City in a ceremony that will precede BookExpo America, the largest publishing trade show in the United States. To see the complete list of winners, visit the Independent Publisher website.
 
CSRC books are award finalists
Three books published by the CSRC Press are finalists for Latino Literacy Now’s 2012 International Latino Book Awards. L.A. Xicano, edited by Chon A. Noriega, Terezita Romo, and Pilar Tompkins Rivas, and Malaquias Montoya, by Terezita Romo, were both nominated for “Nonfiction: Best Arts Book–English.” The Oscar Castillo Papers and Photograph Collection, edited by Colin Gunckel, was nominated for “Nonfiction: Best Reference Book–English.” Winners will be announced June 5, during BookExpo America. A complete list of finalists is available online.
 
Romero wins book award
Robert Chao Romero has received the 2012 Latino Studies Section Book Award from the Latina American Studies Association for The Chinese in Mexico, 1882–1940. Published by the University of Arizona Press in 2012, the book presents a social history of Chinese immigration to and settlement in Mexico during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Romero is an assistant professor in the UCLA César Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies and the UCLA Department of Asian American Studies and a member of the CSRC’s affiliated faculty.
 
Núñez receives teaching award
Irma Beserra Núñez is the recipient of the 2012 Excellence in Teaching Award given by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Section CCAE California Council for Adult Education for her ongoing work in the community. Núñez will be honored at the organization’s awards dinner on June 1. With her partner, artist Don Juan/Johnny D. Gonzalez, Núñez conducted thirteen tours of the L.A. Xicano exhibition Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement at the Fowler Museum, the largest number of tours led by any docent.
 
Critical Documents volume in print
Resisting Categories: Latino American and/or Latino?, edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez, Héctor Olea, and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, is now available. The book is the first volume in the Critical Documents of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art series published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and distributed by Yale University Press. CSRC staff were on the research team for this project, and CSRC Director Chon A. Noriega is on the editorial board for the series. Noriega’s essay “‘Barricades of Ideas’: Latino Culture, Site-Specific Installation, and the U.S. Art Museum” is reprinted in the volume. The book is available for purchase online.
 
“Latino Elders” essay to be published
“Latino Elders Reframing Familismo: Implications for Health and Caregiving Support,” by Maria Elena Ruiz, CSRC associate director and professor of nursing at UCLA, and H. Edward Ransford, professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, will be published in the fall 2012 issue of the Journal of Cultural Diversity. The study explores Latino elders’ perceptions of familismo and the extent to which a familistic orientation translates into health support for older parents. Traditionally, Latinos are portrayed as adhering to a family structure that includes the duty and obligation to care for aging parents. Ruiz and Ransford’s findings question the presumption that the Latino family is able to care for its own.
 
Hedge Coke visits UCLA
Poet and educator Allison Adelle Hedge Coke presented Sing: Indigenous Poetry of the Americas at UCLA’s Young Research Library on May 15. The anthology assembled by Hedge Coke is the first to bring together the work of indigenous poets from North, Central, and South America. The event was cosponsored by the CSRC, the UCLA American Indian Studies Center, and the UCLA Latin American Institute. A copy of the book, which was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2011, is available in the CSRC Library.
 
Martínez-Vu wins summer mentorship
Yvette Martínez-Vu, a doctoral student in theater and performance studies at UCLA, has received a 2012 Graduate Summer Research Mentorship award. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega will serve as her mentor. The mentorship program, sponsored by the UCLA Graduate Division, provides financial support for doctoral students in the humanities, social sciences, and other disciplines in which students have few summer opportunities for apprentice appointments or university funding that is relevant to their graduate training. Participants are expected to complete a draft of a paper by the end of the summer. Martínez-Vu’s research will focus on indigenous performance in the United States and Mexico.
 
Deleyto gives lecture at UO
CSRC visiting scholar Celestino Deleyto gave a talk titled “Erasing Latino L.A.: From Bunker Hill to 500 Days of Summer” at the University of Oregon in Eugene on May 29. The talk addressed how filmic representations of Downtown Los Angeles have traced and manipulated Latino history.
 
Mohseni to retire
Elena H. Mohseni, administrative assistant in the UCLA César Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, will retire this month after twenty-nine years of service to the university. The Chávez Center will host a reception in her honor at the Faculty Center’s Sequoia Room on June 28, 3:30–6:30 p.m.
 
Congratulations to graduating student workers
The CSRC congratulates its student workers who are graduating this spring. Diana Grijalva, Maria Murillo, and Helga Salinas assisted with the processing, preservation, and description of several CSRC Library collections, including the Joan Moore Papers, Patricia Correia Gallery Collection, portions of the La Gente de Aztlán Papers, Edward R. Roybal Papers, Dionicio Morales Papers, and Homeboy Industries Papers. They also worked on several digital image collections, including the Oscar Castillo Photograph Collection, the Garment Workers of Los Angeles, and the Patssi Valdez Digital Image Collection. Karla Lopez has been invaluable to the development of the new CSRC website, which is launching this fall. Fabian Duran worked in the front office and helped with everything from filing to fielding calls to providing support for the CSRC Press. We will greatly miss each of these dedicated individuals. We thank them for their hard work and we wish them the very best.
 
CSRC to cosponsor AJAAS planning meeting
The CSRC will cosponsor the third planning meeting of the Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship (AJAAS), which will take place on UCLA campus, July 13–14. The AJAAS is a new organization formed to provide a bridge to the arts, activism, and scholarship for the Jotería (queer Chicana/o and Latina/o) community. This meeting will focus on developing bylaws and taking the next steps to establish AJAAS as a 501c3 nonprofit organization.
 
NiLP publishes CSRC research agenda
The CSRC was among several Latino-oriented research centers asked by the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP) to present a research agenda for the NiLP Network on Latino Issues. The CSRC research agenda was published May 16 and is viewable here.
 

CSRC in the News

“Cardboard Street Art Documents the Undocumented”
Mentions the CSRC, which is archiving digital images of artist Ramiro Gomez Jr.’s art.
Departures (KCET blog), May 10, 2012 (PDF)
 
“L.A. Artist Plants Cardboard Cutouts of Migrant Workers Around Beverly Hills”
Quotes CSRC librarian Lizette Guerra about the art of Ramiro Gomez Jr.
The Informer (LA Weekly blog), May 10, 2012 (PDF)
 
“Artist Puts Fake Gardeners Near Clooney’s House Before Obama Fundraiser”
The artist, Ramiro Gomez Jr., is donating digital images of his work to the CSRC’s archives.
Colorlines, May 10, 2012 (PDF)
 
“Can Revamped ‘Corner Stores’ Change the Way a Community Eats?”
Discusses a study by a group of researchers that includes Alex Ortega, CSRC associate director.
UCLA Today, May 9, 2012 (PDF)
 
“Latino Street Artist Sparks Conversation About Labor in Beverly Hills”
Quotes CSRC librarian Lizette Guerra about the art of Ramiro Gomez Jr.
Colorlines, May 9, 2012 (PDF)
 
“Los Tigres del Norte llegan a LA con energía renovada”
Discusses the CSRC’s Frontera Collection, funded primarily by the Los Tigres del Norte Foundation.
La Opinión, May 9, 2012 (PDF)
 
PDFs of all articles are available on the CSRC website.
 

Events

All CSRC events are free unless otherwise noted.
Deleyto to screen Monsters
On Thursday, June 7, 4:30–6:30 p.m., in the CSRC Library, CSRC visiting scholar Celestino Deleyto will screen and lead a discussion of Monsters (Gareth Edwards, 2010), a low-budget independent film set in an “infected zone” in northern Mexico that is populated by extraterrestrial aliens. Mixing science fiction, road movie, war film, and even romantic comedy conventions, Monsters provides an uncanny commentary as it follows a U.S. couple who attempt to cross the border to return to their country. Is it science, or is it fiction? Come watch it and let us know what you think!
 
Friends of the Library event
The next Friends of the Library event, “Preserving Family Photographs,” will be held on Wednesday, June 13, 4:00–6:00 p.m. This workshop will cover basic archival principles for preserving family photographs. Participants will learn the basics of arranging, describing, storing, and digitizing photographs for long-term preservation. Participants will have the opportunity to digitize a small selection of their photographs and showcase them in the UCLA Digital Library as part of a larger initiative to document, preserve, and provide online access to a collection of Chicano family albums. These photographic records are designed to reveal a dynamic history of day-to-day life for Chicanos and Chicanas in Los Angeles. The CSRC Library launched its Friends of the Library program in October 2011 for educational, outreach, and fundraising purposes. Members act as liaisons between the CSRC Library and the community it serves by providing support and assisting the library as it fulfills its mission and goals. In turn, the CSRC Library provides members with unique volunteer opportunities, special interest workshops, and a number of events held at the library. If you would like to learn more about this workshop and the Friends of the Library, please contact the CSRC librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.
 
Save the date: 2012 Latina/o Education Summit
The seventh annual Latina/o Education Summit will take place on Friday, October 5, at UCLA. This year’s summit will focus on litigation and legislation that relate to the education of Chicanos and Latinos. The conference will be national in scope, featuring panelists from across the United States. The event is sponsored by the CSRC, with the UCLA School of Law and MALDEF, and it will be hosted by Chon A. Noriega, CSRC director, Rachel Moran, dean of the UCLA School of Law, and Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF. Panel topics for 2012 are:
  • The emerging trend of Latino resegregation, including contemporary battles around school financing and affirmative action.
  • The challenge of addressing the needs of Latino children who have disabilities and are English-language learners without seeing these needs in competition.
  • The interface between education and immigration law and policy in light of new anti-immigrant laws enacted at the state level.

Online registration for the 2012 Latina/o Education Summit will begin in August at www.chicano.ucla.edu. Seating for the conference will be limited.

La Cocina continues at the CSRC Library
An exhibition exploring how we measure the “authenticity” of Mexican food is on display in the CSRC Library vitrine through June 2012. Is authenticity measured by the types of ingredients used? Homemade versus store-bought? Taco shop versus chain restaurant? Or is authenticity based on the identity or ethnicity of the cook? For Chicanas and Chicanos, the kitchen is a site of tradition and familia, and the platillos—the food we eat—is as much a reflection of history and culture as it is of our language, music, and art. Using a variety of archival ephemera, from cookbooks to food packaging, La Cocina highlights this culinary tradition, which mixes traditions from the past as well as more recent customs to become an amalgamation of diverse culinary traditions from people and communities all over the world.
 

CSRC Library

La Causa Buddy Day includes CSRC
On May 18 the CSRC Library hosted nineteen students from La Causa Youth Build, a charter high school in Boyle Heights. These students visited UCLA as part of Bruin Buddy Day, a program hosted by the UCLA Center for Community College Partnerships (CCCP). On Buddy Day, UCLA transfer students advise prospective students on how to transfer from a community college to a major university. The La Causa students attended an undergraduate lecture, a campus tour, an admissions presentation, a student panel, and a talk on the history of the CSRC Library. For more information on Bruin Buddy Day, or if you are interested in supporting the program, visit the CCCP website.
 
Library welcomes new Getty intern
The CSRC is a proud participant in the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program. At the CSRC, these internships are structured around current and ongoing CSRC archival projects in the arts. This summer, the Getty intern for the CSRC Library is Star Montana. Montana is from East Los Angeles and studies photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. For her internship, she will be assisting with the final phase of the Patssi Valdez digitization project, which includes attaching appropriate metadata to digital images of the artist’s work. The collection will then be made available to the public through the UCLA Digital Library. Look for it in September—and welcome, Star!
 
Service-learning program and internships
This past spring quarter the UCLA Department of Information Studies worked in partnership with the CSRC to offer a service-learning program to provide IS graduate students with archiving experience. Hannah Lee assisted with the inventory of audio recordings that are part of the Guillermo Hernández Papers, a collection that includes interviews, music, and lectures. Angel Diaz helped inventory the audio and video materials included in the Yolanda Retter-Vargas Papers, which also includes oral history interviews. Melissa Camaiore assisted with the inventory and processing of the oral history collection produced for the CSRC’s Latino Arts Survey Project as well as the CSRC Press’s A Ver book series. Irene Truong helped CSRC staff process and preserve the Norma Corral Papers, while Niki La Teer processed and preserved the new addition to the Joan Moore Papers. Finally, Vesta Winston assisted with the next phase of the La Gente de Aztlán digitization project by migrating the digitized version of this UCLA student magazine onto the UCLA Digital Library.
 

The CSRC also participates in the UCLA Department of Information Studies internship program. During spring quarter we had the pleasure of working again with students Albert Lowe and Michelle Rojas. Lowe completed processing and preserving the Tatiana de la Tierra Papers, while Rojas continued the processing and preservation of the Mexican American Bar Association (MABA) Papers. Researchers who wish to consult these collections may contact the CSRC librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.

CSRC librarian at ALA
CSRC librarian Lizette Guerra, along with members of the Latino Digital Content Working Group, will hold a focus group at this year’s American Library Association (ALA) annual meeting. Titled “Who is Preserving Chicano Archives for the Future?,” the focus group discussion will take place on Saturday, June 23, at the Anaheim Hilton. In addition to discussing the need for creating, preserving, and providing free access to Latino digital content, the panel will seek various models for creating, sharing, packaging, and marketing Latino digital products and current pioneering projects dedicated to making Latino digital content widely accessible. More information on the ALA conference is available online. For more information on the Latino Digital Content Working Group, visit its website.
 
CSRC librarian at MALCS Summer Institute
The MALCS Summer Institute will be held this year at UC Santa Barbara, July 18–21. Lizette Guerra, CSRC librarian, and Helga Salinas, UCLA undergraduate and CSRC employee, will participate in a panel titled “Resurrecting la Mujer: Documenting and Preserving Women’s Voices within the Historical Record.” More information on the institute is available online.
 
CSRC librarian at SAA
Lizette Guerra, CSRC librarian, will participate in the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists as a panelist for a session titled “Archiving Mujeres: Un Movimiento towards Greater Indiscriminate and Inclusive Recordkeeping Practices within Information Repositories.” Joining her will be Maria Cotera, University of Michigan professor, and Martha Cotera, activist and independent scholar. For more information on the meeting, which will be held in San Diego on August 6–11, visit the SAA’s website.
 
Queer Nation Papers
The CSRC Library is dedicated to increasing its holdings of LGBT and women’s collections and providing access to the stories of these underrepresented communities. During spring quarter Monica Taher Wasserman, a graduate student in the cinema and media studies program at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, assisted with the processing and preservation of the Queer Nation Papers. Queer Nation was an LGBT organization created in Los Angeles by former members of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) to combat violence and negative media portrayals of LGBT individuals and communities. The finding aid for this collection will be available in July. Researchers who wish to consult this collection may contact the librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.
 
Addition to Joan Moore collection
The CSRC has acquired another two-and-a-half linear feet of material to be added to the Joan Moore Papers. These materials include Moore’s field notes, manuscripts, clippings, and surveys from the Mexican American Study Project, carried out in the 1960s, as well as research that led to the publication of Homeboy: Gangs, Drugs and Prison in the Barrios of Los Angeles, published by Temple University Press in 1979. Researchers who wish to consult this collection may contact the librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.
 
Addition to Alex Donis collection
Santa Monica-based artist Alex Donis, who donated fourteen linear feet of materials to the CSRC in 2006, has donated an additional four linear feet to the collection, which includes sketches, paintings, photographs, and videos. Donis will also curate an exhibition of his work in the CSRC Library in the near future. Researchers who wish to consult this collection may contact the librarian, Lizette Guerra, at lguerra@chicano.ucla.edu.
 

CSRC Press

Forthcoming report on hate speech in the media
The second working paper from the CSRC’s study of hate speech in commercial media will be released next month. Social Networks for Hate Speech: Commercial Talk Radio and New Media, by Chon A. Noriega and Javier Iribarren, with Ross Lenihan, Andrew Young, and Héctor Peña Ramírez, analyzes how the social net­works that form around the hosts of commercial talk radio shows can propagate messages that target vulnerable groups. The authors conclude that the hosts of the five shows that were studied promoted an insular discourse that focused on, for example, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, and pro-Tea Party positions and that this discourse found repetition and amplification through social media. The working paper will available online in July.
 
Press welcomes Getty intern
Welcome to Angelica Becerra, who will be working with Press staff as a Getty summer intern. Becerra will assist with the A Ver book series. She is a recent graduate of Cal State Long Beach and will be attending UCLA this fall. The Getty’s Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program is designed to increase diversity in and support for cultural institutions in the Los Angeles area.
 
Malaquias Montoya reviewed

A recent review in Choice, published by the Association of College and Research Libraries, recommends Malaquias Montoya to its readers. The reviewer notes that the author, Terezita Romo, “offers an account that is exhaustive in its presentation” and that she “presents emblematic works (many beautifully reproduced in color), explaining their production and symbols as well as their relationship to Montoya’s writing.” Malaquias Montoya, volume 6 in the A Ver: Revisioning Art History series, may be ordered from the distributor, University of Minnesota Press.

Aztlán seeking submissions
Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies is currently considering submissions for 2012. Each issue of Aztlán presents three types of articles: peer-reviewed essays, thematic dossiers, and book reviews. All submissions are considered on a rolling basis and should be sent to our submission inbox at submissions@chicano.ucla.edu. For complete information about Aztlán and the submission guidelines, please visit the CSRC Press website. To ask questions or discuss ideas with the journal’s staff, please contact CSRC assistant editor David O’Grady at dogrady@chicano.ucla.edu.