CSRC Research Grants, 2005-2006

For the 2004-05 academic year, the CSRC received a total of 23 research grant applications: ten from graduate students, ten from faculty, and three from staff/researchers. Eleven proposals were recommended for IAC funding, including three faculty, one staff-researcher, and seven students, including:

MANIFEST DESTINIES: LAW AND RACE IN THE 19TH CENTURY SOUTHWEST

Principal Investigator: Laura Gomez, UCLA School of Law
 
The goal of this project, with the completion of field research, is the preparation of a book at the end of 2004-05. The monograph, Manifest Destinies, will be a counter-point to the dominant narrative about westward colonization, settlement by Euro-Americans, and eventual annexation. Manifest Destinies focuses on New Mexico's society as both the majority of the population in what would become the Southwest and the locus of conflict, cooperation, and competition among Mexicans, Indians, and Euro-Americans. In part, New Mexico emerges as the site for exploring the clash of peoples in the 19th century Southwest because it is the product of what might be called double-colonization: the American colonization of the 19th century was grafted onto the Spanish colonization of the 15th and 16th centuries. The project is interdisciplinary and utilizes a broad array of primary sources, including: the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and other treaties relevant to the Mexican war; legislation passed by Congress and the New Mexico Territorial Legislature; published U.S. Supreme Court and New Mexico Territorial Supreme Court opinions and accompanying court records; unpublished court records from five New Mexico counties; 19th century newspapers published in New Mexico and in major U.S. cities; records of the territorial penitentiary and county jails; various territorial and county government records; and documents from private papers of judges, lawyers and elected officials.
 

CONTESTED HISTORIES: CHICANAS IN MOVEMENT

Principal Investigator: Maylei S. Blackwell, UCLA César Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
 
Based on extensive archival research and oral histories, this project delineates the historical formation of Chicana feminism by centering on the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc, an early feminist organization that emerged from the ranks of the Chicano Student Movement. Shaped by the gendered contradictions they encountered in the Chicano Movement and the marginalization of women's issues, this group of young Chicanas helped mobilize women on campuses and community organizations throughout Southern California . The Hijas de Cuauhtémoc newspaper along with the 1973 publication of Encuentro Femenil, the first journal of Chicana studies, were founded by members of Hijas de Cuauhtémoc and created a vital Chicana feminist print culture in which new political identities, discourses and strategies were constructed and debated. The research project will produce a book manuscript that documents local histories of Chicana political organizing in southern California to examine how the meanings of race, sexuality and gender were transformed in the political culture of the Chicano Movement.
 

IDENTIFYING CRITICAL CONDITIONS IN CRITICAL TIMES: INCREASING COLLEGE ACCESS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS

Pricipal Investigator: Kris D. Gutierrez, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
 
This project will document the educational ecology of two successful intervention projects for English Language Learners (k-12). The UCLA Las Redes Computer-mediated after school program and the UCLA Migrant Student Leadership Institute are grounded in a well-established literature of successful intervention in 5th Dimension projects and decolonizing practices. While a number of small studies of literacy, writing, identity formation, and problem-solving have been conducted on these programs, there has been no systematic study of the educational ecology inherent to each of these two distinct settings. This project will document the critical conditions that lead to the success of these two programs and project findings will have important implications for designing and sustaining robust learning communities for students across California. Project findings are of critical importance in a time when outreach programs are being devalued and eliminated.
 

LATINO/A TRANSITION TO COLLEGE: THE ROLE OF OUTREACH

Principal Investigator: Debra Pounds, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
 
Outreach programs, also known as pre-collegiate preparation programs, have emerged as a central way for universities to increase access to higher education for underrepresented students, particularly for Latino/a students. In California the University of California Early Academic Outreach Program (UC EAOP) estimates that in 2004 nearly one-third of the historically underrepresented students at the University of California (UC) participated in EAOP during high school (UC EAOP, 2004). Given the large numbers of Latino students at UC who participate in UC EAOP programs, there is a need to understand the cumulative impact of outreach that extends into students' college experience. This study aims uncover the cumulative impact of outreach by linking the effectiveness of outreach programs from acceptance to college alone to adjustment and persistence in the college years. Implicit in this study is the notion that successful preparation for college only begins by entering college and that genuine success is measured by earning a college degree. Latino students who participated in the UC Early Outreach Program (high school level) will participate in this study, including interviews prior to entering college and again after their first quarter in college. This project has i mportant policy implications for UCLA, UC and Chicano Studies in the area of student access to higher education.
 

ISSUES IN MAKING THE FIRST DICTIONARY FOR SAN JUAN GUELAVIA ZAPOTEC

Principal Investigator: Olivia Veronica Martinez, PhD candidate, UCLA Department of Applied Linguistics/TESL
 
The goal of this project is to produce a preliminary dictionary for San Juan Guelavia Zapotec (Guelavia Zapotec), a language for which there is little documentation. This study involves ongoing work with native Guelavia Zapotec speakers who have immigrated to the Loa Angeles area in order to complete the dictionary as part of a dissertation in applied linguistics. The immigrant community of San Juan Guelavia, coming from Oaxaca, Mexico, is a minority within the population of Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles that is growing and quite diverse. This group of immigrants has a different native language and different cultural background from the majority of Mexican immigrants. The dictionary being produced with assistance from the San Juan Guelavia community will be a resource for both native Guelavia Zapotec speakers and linguists.
 

BODY IMAGE INFLUENCES FOR MEXICAN IMMIGRANT AND CHICANA ADOLESCENT GIRLS

Principal Investigator: Gloria Gonzalez, PhD candidate, UCLA Department of Sociology
 
This project is preliminary to a dissertation project on body image, body size, and eating disorders among young women of color. Apart from analysis of existing survey data on the relationship of body size and body image among white, Latina, and Black women, the project deals with the question of how race and class influence the body image development of two groups: Mexican immigrants and Chicana adolescent girls ages 14-16. It proposes that body image is not simply about being overweight, but is heavily influenced and affected by ethnicity, class, phenotype, and generational level. Research on body image focuses primarily on weight and the desire of thinness, eating disorders, and white middle-class populations. Building on research that typically examines body image for white middle class women, and racial differences between White and African American women, this study fills the gap that exists for the Mexican and Chicana community and body image. The research will address the intersection of ethnicity and class on body image and the relationship and extent to which ethnic differences may be social class differences.
 

FAMILY WARMTH AND SOCIAL SUPPORT IN MEXICAN-AMERICANS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Principal Investigator: Christina Lorraine Chang, PhD student, UCLA Department of Psychology
 
This Project aims to better understand the relationship of family warmth to outcome in Mexican Americans with schizophrenia through examination of the social support available. Early studies have demonstrated that family factors are related to course of illness in schizophrenia. For Mexican Americans, as family warmth increases the likelihood of relapse decreases, whereas for Anglo-Americans family warmth is not significantly related to relapse. Thus examining prosocial family factors such as family warmth and its correlates in the sociocultural context of the Mexican American family may help identify protective factors for Mexican Americans with schizophrenia. This project will study the relationship of family warmth to outcome in Mexican Americans with schizophrenia through examination of the social support available to the ill relative and key family member. Participants will be 30 patients with schizophrenia and 30 key relatives, one relative per patient.
 

THE EVOLUTION OF A CRITICAL RACE THEATER: CULTURE CLASH AND CHICANA/O PERFORMANCE ART, 1965-2004

Principal Investigator: David Gumaro Garcia, PhD candidate, UCLA Department of History

This historical study of the Chicano theater movement focuses on the work of Culture Clash, a major comedy theater group over 20 years. Includes oral history interviews with Culture Clash members, analysis of their work, and how the group places the experiences of people of color center stage and challenges audiences to revisit history.
 

EL PRIMER DIA DE CLASSES: IN SEARCH OF MENDEZ VS. WESTMINSTER

Principal Investigator: Erica Harriet Bennett, MA student, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
 
This project focuses on the Mendez landmark court case on school segregation of Mexican children (1946). It links archival research methods and the Mendez case with the goal of developing a curriculum for K-12 based on Mendez and how to implement archival research on the case. The project includes the preparation of a screenplay, ?The Archivist as Producer,? underscoring that the responsibility of the archivist is not only to collect and provide access to archival materials, but also to produce or promote and interpret the collections in their protection. The screenplay will be produced as an educational video on the Mendez case and will be used as part of the curriculum to train Chicano students on how to access Mendez archives and how to conduct library/archival research.
 

CULTURAL VALUES, PARENTAL SOCIALIZATION GOALS & SHYNESS IN MEXICAN-AMERICAN CHILDREN

Principal Investigator: Omar Gabriel Gudino, PhD candidate, UCLA Department of Psychology
 
This study examines cultural influences on the nature and consequences of childhood shyness and how shy behaviors in children may relate to cultural socialization in Mexican American families. First, the study posits a relationship between parental socialization goals and collectivistic cultural values and expressed shyness in Mexican American children. Second, it anticipates that shyness will be highly context-dependent in Mexican American children. Third, it examines whether childhood shyness is related to impairments in social functioning among Mexican American children. Participants will include 100 Mexican American children age 8 to 11 and their parent/guardian from third, fourth and fifth grade level. The research examines the influence on the adaptiveness and prolonged effects of shyness and questions the ethnocentric views of appropriate child social behavior that have emerged as a result of research conducted with Euro-American populations. In the absence of data on ethnic minority child development, it is possible that normative cultural behavior will be over-pathologized in American culture.
 

VOICES FROM THE MARGINS: EXPERIENCES OF RACIAL AND SEXUAL IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION FOR URBAN LATINO YOUTH

Glenda Rossana Aleman, PhD candidate, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

This study is in response to a dearth of scholarship on the intersections of race and sexuality, and how Latino lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) high school students experience their racial and sexual identity. This study will delve beyond anecdotal descriptions of LGBT students' schooling experiences and produce case studies of Latino LGBT students to develop a theory on the ways in which families and ethnic communities affect the identities and life choices of these students, and how experiences in schools interconnect with, or possibly contradict with their home lives around this issue. Includes case studies of six Latino LGBT students utilizing in-depth interviews and focus groups, along with interviews of high school instructors and administrators.