Chicano Studies

Chicano Studies is a comparatively new academic discipline. Unlike well-established fields of study that long ago codified their canons and curricula, the departments of Chicano Studies that exist today on U.S. college and university campuses are less than four decades old. In this edifying and frequently eye-opening book, a career member of the discipline examines its foundations and early years. Based on an extraordinary range of sources and cognizant of infighting and the importance of personalities, Chicano Studies is the first history of the discipline. What are the assumptions, models, theories, and practices of the academic discipline now known as Chicano Studies? Like most scholars working in the field, Michael Soldatenko didn't know the answers to these questions even though he had been teaching for many years. Intensely curious, he set out to find the answers, and this book is the result of his labors. Here readers will discover how the discipline came into existence in the late 1960s and how it matured during the next fifteen years-from an often confrontational protest of dissatisfied Chicana/o college students into a univocal scholarly voice (or so it appears to outsiders). Part intellectual history, part social criticism, and part personal meditation, Chicano Studies attempts to make sense of the collision (and occasional wreckage) of politics, culture, scholarship, ideology, and philosophy that created a new academic discipline. Along the way, it identifies a remarkable cast of scholars and administrators who added considerable zest to the drama.

Most articles previously published in Aztlaan: a journal of Chicano studies, between 1997 and 2003.

The Routledge Handbook of Chicana/o Studies is a unique interdisciplinary resource for students, libraries, and researchers interested in the largest and most rapidly growing racial-ethnic community in the United States and elsewhere which can either be identified as Chicano, Latino, Hispanic, or Mexican-American. Structured around seven comprehensive themes, the volume is for students of American studies, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities. The volume is organized around seven critical domains in Chicana/o Studies: Chicana/o History and Social Movements Borderlands, Global Migrations, Employment, and Citizenship Cultural Production in Global and Local Settings Chicana/o Identities Schooling, Language, and Literacy Violence, Resistance, and Empowerment International Perspectives The Handbook will stress the importance of the historical origins of the Chicana/o Studies field. Starting from myth of origins, Aztlán, alleged cradle of the Chicana/o people lately substantiated by the findings of archaeology and anthropology, over Spanish/Indigenous relations until the present time. Essays will explore cultural and linguistic hybridism and showcase artistic practices (visual arts, music, and dance) through popular (folklore) or high culture achievements (museums, installations) highlighting the growth of a critical perspective grounded on key theoretical formulations including borderlands theories, intersectionalities, critical race theory, and cultural analysis.

"An anthology of articles from Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, published between 1970 and 2019. The fourth edition includes a new section on Chicana/o and Latina/o youth."--

Anthology of articles from Aztlâan: A Journal of Chicano Studies that focus on the education of Chicana/os and Latina/os. Articles appeared in the journal between 1973 and 2014.

The Making of Chicana/o Studies traces the philosophy and historical development of the field of Chicana/o studies from precursor movements to the Civil Rights era to today, focusing its lens on the political machinations in higher education that sought to destroy the discipline. As a renowned leader, activist, scholar, and founding member of the movement to establish this curriculum in the California State University system, which serves as a model for the rest of the country, Rodolfo F. Acuña has, for more than forty years, battled the trend in academia to deprive this group of its academic presence. The book assesses the development of Chicana/o studies (an area of studies that has even more value today than at its inception)--myths about its epistemological foundations have remained uncontested. Acuña sets the record straight, challenging those in the academy who would fold the discipline into Latino studies, shadow it under the dubious umbrella of ethnic studies, or eliminate it altogether. Building the largest Chicana/o studies program in the nation was no easy feat, especially in an atmosphere of academic contention. In this remarkable account, Acuña reveals how California State University, Northridge, was instrumental in developing an area of study that offers more than 166 sections per semester, taught by 26 tenured and 45 part-time instructors. He provides vignettes of successful programs across the country and offers contemporary educators and students a game plan--the mechanics for creating a successful Chicana/o studies discipline--and a comprehensive index of current Chicana/o studies programs nationwide. Latinas/os, of which Mexican Americans are nearly seventy percent, comprise a complex sector of society projected to be just shy of thirty percent of the nation's population by 2050. The Making of Chicana/o Studies identifies what went wrong in the history of Chicana/o studies and offers tangible solutions for the future.

This book explores the most recent critical and theoretical approaches in the field of Chicano studies from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributions go back to the 4th International Conference on Chicano Literature which took place in Sevilla in May 2004. They deal with a wide variety of topics and approach the subject from diverse viewpoints. Some examine specific literary texts by major Chicano authors from feminist, comparative and close-reading approaches, others discuss ideological and cultural issues like folklore, ethnicity, identity, sexuality or stereotypes, while yet others focus on artistic manifestations like films and murals. Furthermore, the volume also includes an interview with the Chicana writer Ana Castillo. The main goal of this collection is to find new cultural possibilities and strategies while exploring future dilemmas in the field of Chicano Studies.

The interdisciplinary essays in Decolonial Voices discuss racialized, subaltern, feminist, and diasporic identities and the aesthetic politics of hybrid and mestiza/o cultural productions. This collection represents several key directions in the field: First, it charts how subaltern cultural productions of the US/ Mexico borderlands speak to the intersections of "local," "hemispheric," and "globalized" power relations of the border imaginary. Second, it recovers the Mexican women's and Chicana literary and cultural heritages that have been ignored by Euro-American canons and patriarchal exclusionary practices. It also expands the field in postnationalist directions by creating an interethnic, comparative, and transnational dialogue between Chicana and Chicano, African American, Mexican feminist, and U.S. Native American cultural vocabularies. Contributors include Norma Alarcón, Arturo J. Aldama, Frederick Luis Aldama, Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Alejandra Elenes, Ramón Garcia, María Herrera-Sobek, Patricia Penn Hilden, Gaye T. M. Johnson, Alberto Ledesma, Pancho McFarland, Amelia María de la Luz Montes, Laura Elisa Pérez, Naomi Quiñonez, Sarah Ramirez, Rolando J. Romero, Delberto Dario Ruiz, Vicki Ruiz, José David Saldívar, Anna Sandoval, and Jonathan Xavier Inda.

Until recently, mainstream American environmentalism has been a predominantly white, middle-class movement, essentially ignoring the class, race, and gender dimensions of environmental politics. In this provocative collection of original essays, the environmental dimensions of the Chicana/o experience are explicitly expressed and debated. Employing a variety of genres ranging from poetry to autobiography to theoretical and empirical essays, the voices in this collection speak to the most significant issues of environmentalism and social justice, recognizing throughout the need for a pluralism of Chicana/o philosophies. The contributors provide an excellent basis for understanding how multiple Chicana/o views on the environment play out in the context of dominant social, political and economic views. Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics examines a number of Chicana/o ecological perspectives. How can the ethics of reciprocity present in Chicana/o agropastoral life be protected and applied on a broader scale? How can the dominant society, whose economic structure is invested in "placeless mobility," take note of the harm caused to land-based cultures, take responsibility for it, and take heed before it is too late? Will the larger society be "ecologically housebroken" before it destroys its home? Grounded in actual political struggles waged by Chicana/o communities over issues of environmental destruction, cultural genocide, and socioeconomic domination, this volume provides an important series of snapshots of Chicana/o history. Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics illuminates the bridges that existÑand must be understoodÑbetween race, ethnicity, class, gender, politics, and ecology. CONTENTS Part 1: IndoHispano Land Ethics Los Animalitos: Culture, Ecology, and the Politics of Place in the Upper RÁo Grande, Devon G. Pe–a Social Action Research, Bioregionalism, and the Upper R’o Grande, RubŽn O. Mart’nez Notes on (Home)Land Ethics: Ideas, Values, and the Land, Reyes Garc’a Part 2: Environmental History and Ecological Politics Ecological Legitimacy and Cultural Essentialism: Hispano Grazing in Northern New Mexico, Laura Pulido The Capitalist Tool, the Lawless, and the Violent: A Critique of Recent Southwestern Environmental History, Devon G. Pe–a and RubŽn O. Mart’nez Ecofeminism and Chicano Environmental Struggles: Bridges across Gender and Race, Gwyn Kirk Philosophy Meets Practice: A Critique of Ecofeminism through the Voices of Three Chicana Activists, Malia Davis Part 3: Alternatives to Destruction The Pasture Poacher (a poem), Joseph C. Gallegos Acequia Tales: Stories from a Chicano Centennial Farm, Joseph C. Gallegos A Gold Mine, an Orchard, and an Eleventh Commandment, Devon G. Pe–a

Chicano Nations argues that the trans-nationalism that is central to Chicano identity originated in the global, postcolonial moment at- the turn of the nineteenth century rather than as an effect of contemporary economic conditions, which began in the mid nineteenth century and primarily affected the labouring classes. The Spanish empire then began to implode, and colonists in the new world debated the national contours of the viceroyalties. This is where Marissa K. Lopez locates the origins of Chicano literature, which is now and always has been post-national, encompassing the wealthy, the poor, the white, and the mestizo. Tracing the long history of Chicano literature and the diversity of subject positions it encompasses, Chicano Nations explores the shifting literary forms authors have used to write the nation from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Lopez argues that while national and global tensions lie at the historical heart of Chicana/o narratives of the nation, there should be alternative ways to imagine the significance of Chicano literature other than as a reflection of national identity.In a nuanced analysis, the book provides a way to think of early writers as a meaningful part of Chicano literary history, and, in looking at the nation, rather than the particularities of identity, as that which connects Chicano literature over time, it engages the emerging hemispheric scholarship on U.S. literature.