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CSRC Newsletter - June 2015

Volume 13, Number 9

Director’s Message

As the academic year comes to an end, we congratulate the Class of 2015! As you know, learning is more than the acquisition of knowledge and skills from a school, a teacher, or a book. It is not about taking but about sharing, as many of you have done by contributing your time, talents, and commitment to the CSRC. Learning is a way of being in the world that makes a difference. It is the diploma that lives through your actions, and not on a wall. 
 
I would like to celebrate someone who is an exemplar of such learning: my longtime colleague Concepcíon Valadez, who will retire from UCLA at the end of the month. Concepción earned her Ph.D. in education at Stanford University in 1976. In 1977-78, she joined the education faculty at UCLA as one of the first appointments made through the CSRC’s six “Institutional FTEs.” Since then her work has been a model for what these positions were meant to do: diversify the campus and strengthen community relations. Concepción chaired the CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee during a critical time relatively soon after her arrival, when the CSRC was creating and struggling to sustain the degree program that many years later evolved into the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies. She played a similar role at the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. Throughout my own tenure as director, I have had the benefit of her unwavering service and support as a member of CSRC Faculty Advisory Committee.
 
Retirement does not signal the end of Concepción’s learning, but rather its next phase. She continues two research projects and is developing a third that will extend her groundbreaking work on language education, bilingualism, exemplary school practices, and linguistic minorities. She will also continue to be involved with the CSRC, as we hope will be the case for the Class of 2015. ¡Felicidades! And, see you next year.  
 
Chon A. Noriega
Director and Professor
 

News

 
Spotlight on Archival Research
Students research Gronk and Legorreta collections
In May members of a freshman seminar visited the CSRC Library to examine the photographs and ephemera in the Gronk Papers that are related to the Chicano artist collective Asco, as well as photographs, scrapbook pages, and Latino-themed and Latino-oriented documents and ephemera in the Robert Legorreta “Cyclona” Collection. The seminar, “Unfixing Values: Experimental Art in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s,” explored how art can provoke questions of value, audience, and exchange. The class focused on installation art, performance art, artist publications, and short films created by artists from different L.A. communities. CSRC archive manager Michael Stone worked with the group and spoke about the process of preserving the two CRSC collections. As a result of the visit, three students elected to write their final research papers on various aspects of Asco’s performance- and media-based artworks.
 
The seminar was a component of UCLA’s general education cluster programs, yearlong interdisciplinary courses that focus on one topic throughout the year and are open only to freshman students. During the fall and winter quarters students attend lectures team-taught by faculty from various departments and discussion sections led by graduate teaching fellows. In the spring students enroll in one of the seminars designed and taught by the teaching fellows. Kavior Moon, a Ph.D. candidate in art history at UCLA, was the instructor of “Unfixing Values,” which was offered as part of the cluster program on Los Angeles.
 
López cited in Humanistic Tradition text
The work of artist Yolanda López is discussed in the seventh edition of The Humanistic Tradition, book 6: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Global Perspective, by Gloria K. Fiero. Included is a reproduction of López’s painting Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe (1978). The image was provided by the CSRC. The work also appears in Yolanda M. López, by Karen Mary Davalos, volume 6 of the CSRC’s A Ver: Revisioning Art History series.
 
Johnson appointed to Chicana/o and African American studies
The CSRC welcomes Gaye Theresa Johnson as an associate professor in the Chicana/o and African American Studies Departments. Johnson, whose appointment begins in fall 2015, is currently an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches classes in black studies, Chicana/o studies, and history. Her research and writing focus on race and racism, cultural history, spatial politics, and political economy. Her first book, Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles, was published by the University of California Press in 2013. Johnson, who is active with the Los Angeles Community Action Network and its commitment to housing and civil rights on skid row, was the 2013 recipient of the Freedom Now! Award for her work with the organization.
 
Flores Sternad appointed to English department at UPenn
The CSRC congratulates Jennifer Flores Sternad, former CSRC associate researcher, on her new appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work as an academic and curator focuses on militant art, performance, and artistic practices aligned with leftist social movements in the Americas. She is the author of essays in Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization (NAi Publishers, 2011), MEX/LA: Mexican Modernism(s) in Los Angeles, 1930–1985 (Hatje Cantz, 2011), and Live Art in L.A.: Performance in Southern California, 1970–1983 (Routledge, 2012), among other publications. She is a co-founder of Collective Intelligence Agency, a research and media art project. Flores Sternad completed her Ph.D. in American studies at New York University.
 
Visiting scholars report on research
Each year visiting scholars conduct research at the CSRC to further their knowledge of Chicana/o studies, usually with a focus on developing courses or publications.
 
  • Leticia Alvarado, assistant professor of American studies and ethnic studies at Brown University, conducted research and completed a draft of a book manuscript titled “Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production.” Her research was funded by a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. Alvarado’s book explores the political possibilities that are revealed when Latino cultural producers embrace abjection while querying the limits of suturing representational aesthetics to representative politics. Alvarado has also been a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the Fales Library and Special Collections archives at New York University. During her year at the CSRC she presented at a number of national conferences and completed three essays: “…Toward a Personal Will to Continue Being ‘Other’: Ana Mendieta’s Abject Performances,” published in Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies; “‘What Comes after Loss?’: Ana Mendieta after José,” forthcoming in Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform of Criticism; and “Asco’s Asco and the Queer Affective Resonance of Abjection,” forthcoming in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies.
  • Ernesto Chávez, associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas, El Paso, used his time at the CSRC to conduct research and begin writing a critical biography of Mexican-born Ramón Novarro, a gay Catholic actor who gained stardom in the silent era, maintained a career in the early sound period, and emerged as a character actor in film and television. In 1968 he was killed by a male hustler and outed posthumously. Chávez looked at a variety of collections in archives at UCLA, USC, and the Huntington Library, and he also traveled to New York and London to gather materials. He gave presentations at UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, and the Inter-University Program in Latino Research’s Siglo XXI Conference at the University of Notre Dame. Chávez, who was an Institute of American Cultures Visiting Researcher, will give a presentation on his research at UCLA on June 3 (see Events, below).
  • Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, art historian, curator in modern and contemporary art, and former chief curator at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, is currently guest curator at the Hammer Museum for the upcoming exhibition The Political Body: Radical Women in Latin American Art 1960–1985, which will be presented as part of the Getty Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Fajardo-Hill’s research on Chicana and Latina artists expanded the focus of the exhibition to include artists Celia Alvarez Muñoz, Isabel Castro, Diane Gamboa, Yolanda López, Silvia Salazar Simpson, and Patssi Valdez. The  exhibition will reappraise the contribution of Latina, Chicana, and Latin American women artists to contemporary art.
  • After two years at UCLA, UC Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar Juan Herrera will be starting a position this fall as assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Oregon State University’s School of Language, Culture, and Society. ¡Felicidades!
  • Lindsay Pérez Huber, assistant professor of social and cultural analysis of education at Cal State Long Beach, continued her research on theorizing racial inequities in education. During the past year she co-authored two articles that advance the conceptual framework of racial microaggressions in the field of social sciences: “Racial Microaggressions as a Tool for Critical Race Research,” which appeared in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Education, and “Visualizing Everyday Racism: Critical Race Theory, Visual Microaggressions, and the Historical Image of Mexican Banditry,” which was published in Qualitative Inquiry. Additionally, Pérez Huber co-authored DACAmented in California: The Impact of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program on Latina/os, a CSRC Research Report prepared for the CSRC’s 2014 Latina/o Education Summit, and a related CSRC Policy Brief, The Growing Educational Equity Gap for California’s Latina/o Students, which reports that compared to a decade ago, the educational attainment of California’s Latina/o students has fallen further behind that of their white counterparts. This coming fall she and Carlos M. Haro, CSRC assistant director emeritus, will co-coordinate the 2015 Latina/o Education Summit, “Ten Years of the Latina/o Education Pipeline: Lessons Learned and Sites of Possibilities,” which will be held on November 6 at the UCLA Faculty Center (see Events, below). Pérez Huber was also invited to participate as a research expert on racial microaggressions in a seminar titled “Fostering Inclusive Excellence: Strategies and Tools for Department Chairs and Deans.” Presented by the UCLA Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, the seminar was designed to broaden faculty leaders’ capacity to support faculty diversity and enhance an inclusive campus climate.
New videos on CSRC YouTube
 
  • Panel: Organizing Latino Immigrants in the Informal Economy: The Successful Case of the Association of Latin American Gardeners of Los Angeles (May 13, 2015) (video) Panelists Alvaro Huerta, Adrian Alvarez, Scott L. Cummings, and Victor Narro discuss the successful campaign of a small group of Latino gardeners and Chicana/o activists who organized to challenge the city of Los Angeles’s draconian ordinance against the use of leaf blowers. Jardineros who violated the ban could be charged with a misdemeanor, resulting in a fine of up to $1,000 and possible jail time of up to six months.
  • Book talk: When Crime Fiction Matters: A Transborder Dialogue (April 29, 2015) (video) UCLA visiting lecturer Sandra Ruiz and UCLA professor Héctor Calderón moderate a discussion with novelists Lucha Corpi and Patricia Valladares and UCLA professor and author Alicia Gaspar de Alba on noir style crime writing within the contexts of geography and gender.

CSRC in the News

 
“Movies’ Most Memorable Mexican-American Moments”
As part of What It Means to Be American, a national conversation hosted by the Smithsonian and Zócalo Public Square, CSRC director Chon A. Noriega was among a group of four art and film scholars who discussed the most prominent and memorable cinematic depictions of the experiences of Mexican Americans and Mexicans living in the United States.
What It Means to Be American, May 26, 2015 (PDF)
Zócalo Public Square: Up For Discussion, May 26, 2015 (PDF)
UCLA Today, May 28, 2015 (PDF)
UCLA Newsroom, Faculty Bulletin Board, May 28, 2015 (PDF)
 
“UCLA Journal to Host Event on Police Violence in Chicana/o Communities”
The Daily Bruin previewed the symposium “Contesting Global Police Violence,” held May 27 at the CSRC and organized by the editorial board of Regeneración Tlacuilolli: UCLA Raza Studies Journal. The journal is sponsored by the CSRC.
Daily Bruin, May 27, 2015 (PDF)
 
“Roundup: Vegas Style in Turkmenistan, Art’s ‘Patron Satan,’ Fear of Shiny Planet”
In this roundup of arts news, Los Angeles Times reporter Carolina Miranda notes The Getty Iris story about the CSRC’s La Raza Newspaper and Magazine Records.
Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2015 (PDF)
 
“Artists’ Talk with the Maricón Collective”
UCLA Today previewed the CSRC event “Artists’ Talk: Maricón Collective” on May 21.
UCLA Today, May 21, 2015 (PDF)
 
“La paradoja hispana: El secreto de por qué los latinos en EE.UU. viven más años”
CSRC associate director Alex Ortega was interviewed concerning the “Hispanic Paradox,” which argues that Latinos live longer than whites in the United States despite having less access to healthy food.
BBC Mundo, May 20, 2015 (PDF)
 
“KCK Health Advocates Seek to Counter Junk Food Marketing Strategies”
CSRC associate director Alex Ortega was interviewed by the radio station KCUR 89.3 FM, based in Kansas City, Missouri, for a story on efforts to improve the quality of food sold in grocery stores in predominantly Latino neighborhoods in the area. Ortega is the co-leader of the Corner Store Makeover Project directed by the UCLA Center for Population Health and Health Disparities.
KCUR 89.3 FM, May 19, 2015 (PDF)
 
“The Local Newspaper That Helped Shape a Chicano Identity”
The Getty’s online magazine featured a profile of photographer Luis Garza and the La Raza Newspaper and Magazine Records, now being digitized by the CSRC. Photographs from the collection will be featured in an upcoming exhibition on La Raza at the Autry Museum. It is one of three that are being co-developed by the CSRC in conjunction with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative.
The Getty Iris, May 15, 2015 (PDF)
 
All “In the News” articles are available in PDF format on the CSRC website.
 

Events

 
Panel: “Mexico: Narco-State, Popular Resistance, and the U.S.”
Monday, June 1, 2:00–5:00 p.m.
History Department Conference Room–6275 Bunche Hall
On September 26, 2014, forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School in Guerrero disappeared on their way to a protest in the town of Iguala. Six weeks later it was revealed that they had been executed and incinerated in the municipal dump and that Iguala government officials, along with a local gang allied with the mayor, had been implicated in the crime and were in detention on murder charges. Across the country tens of thousands responded, mounting daily demonstrations against the violence that has brought death to as many as 100,000 people in the last decade. In a series of demonstrations in Mexico City, tens of thousands marched to the Zócalo, demanding transparency, justice, and an end to police corruption. The Ayotzinapa protests will be the subject of a discussion by Daniel Hernandez, Mexico bureau chief for VICE News and author of Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century (Scribner, 2011), and Christy Thornton, journalist, producer of the WBAI Morning Show in New York City, and former executive director of the North American Congress on Latin America. This event is presented by the UCLA Center for Social Theory and Comparative History as part of its annual colloquium series and co-sponsored by the CSRC, the UCLA Latin American Institute, and the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies.
 
Talk: “On the Road with Ramón Novarro: The Challenges and Rewards of Interdisciplinary Research”
Wednesday, June 3, 5:00–7:00 p.m.
Darren Star Theater–1422A Melnitz Hall
The UCLA Cinema and Media Studies (CMS) Department colloquium series, in collaboration with the CSRC, welcomes Ernesto Chávez for a presentation on Mexican-born Ramón Novarro, a Catholic gay actor who achieved stardom during the silent era, maintained it during the early sound period, and then was a character actor in film and television from 1940s until his death at the hands of a male hustler (whom he hired) in 1968. Chávez, associate professor of history at the University of Texas, El Paso and IAC Visiting Researcher at the CSRC for 2014-15, is concerned with the way that Novarro “performed” his life and how his race, sexuality, and religious devotion intersected to enable his success.  For more information on Chávez and his research project, visit http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/about/csrc-fellows-visiting-scholars-2014-2015.
 
SAVE THE DATE!
The Tenth Annual CSRC Latina/o Education Summit
“Ten Years of the Latina/o Education Pipeline: Lessons Learned and Sites of Possibilities”
Friday, November 6 (all day)
UCLA Faculty Center
For the past ten years the CSRC has held an annual conference highlighting urgent issues in the Latina/o educational pipeline. This conference informs research, practice, and policy by engaging faculty, administrators, students, policymakers, educators, and community members. This coming fall, the tenth summit will examine how much and in what ways educational access and opportunity for California Latina/o students (kindergarten through graduate school) has increased since these annual discussions began.
 
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

 
CSRC Library hosts SMC students
On May 22 the CSRC Library welcomed a group of twenty-eight students from Santa Monica College’s Black Collegians and Adelante programs. CSRC director Chon A. Noriega spoke about the activist origins of the library and described its current holdings, programs, and projects. 
 
New collection: Eloy Torrez Collection
The CSRC Library is pleased to have received a small but significant set of family photos from local artist Eloy Torrez. Torrez, a painter and muralist, has exhibited his studio work internationally since 1978 and has had numerous public and private commissions, including the mural The Pope of Broadway, a tribute to Anthony Quinn, on the Victor Clothing Company building in downtown Los Angeles. The CSRC hopes to host a library exhibition of Torrez’s work in the 2015-16 year.
 
New Getty intern
The CSRC welcomes Elinor De La Torre as this year’s summer intern through the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Internship Program. Elinor is an anthropology-sociology major at Bryn Mawr College where, in addition to being a full-time student, she works in the library’s special collections unit. At the CSRC Library she will assist with the processing of several art collections.
 

CSRC Press

 
Aztlán, the premier journal of Chicana/o studies, is inviting new submissions! Aztlán publishes scholarship from many disciplines relevant to Chicana/o studies, and welcomes submissions in both English and Spanish. We are seeking submissions for all three areas of the journal:
 
Essays
Our essays are research-based and come form a wide variety of disciplines - literature, sociology, history, political science, the arts, linguistics, gender studies, ethnic studies, and many other fields—but always engage the Chicano experience. All essays are peer reviewed and 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 scholar as a guest curator who wishes to create a dossier theme for an issue and helps to manage dossier development. Please contact Karrmen Crey at kcrey@chicano.ucla.edu to explore this opportunity.
 
Book Reviews
If you are interested in writing a book review for us, we gladly consider suggested titles or we can recommend a book for you that matches your field of interest. Please be sure to contact our book review coordinator, Daniel Zweifach, directly at revieweditor@chicano.ucla.edu to inquire about reviews.
 
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 Karrmen Crey, assistant editor, at kcrey@chicano.ucla.edu. We look forward to your submissions!
 
Register for online access to Aztlán
Current subscribers to Aztlán may now register for online access to the journal through ingentaconnect.com. If you have problems accessing your account or questions about your subscription, please contact support@chicano.ucla.edu. Subscriptions to Aztlán include two print issues a year plus full online access to every issue published. Subscribe today!
 
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45 for 45!
The 2014-15 academic year marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the CSRC. If you value our work, please consider giving a tax-deductible donation of $45. To give $45 for our 45th, click here. Any amount is welcome. Thank you for your support.