Category Archives: Digital Humanities

Reports from July 2016 Latina/o Studies Association Conference

panelists pictured

Panelists Beatriz Tapia, Alexandro Gradilla, Anita Tijerina Revilla, and Magdalena L. Barrera. Photo by M. Barrera. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Latina/o Studies Association 2016: Nourishing the Mind and the Spirit

By Magdalena L. Barrera

The 2016 LSA conference was a wonderful experience, for many reasons. To situate myself: I am a faculty member of the Mexican American Studies department at San José State University. My primary area of research is analysis of textual representations of Mexican Americans in early twentieth century American cultural production; however, in recent years I have developed a secondary research area that explores the retention and mentoring of first-generation and underrepresented students in higher education. This second area was inspired in part by the learning curve I underwent as my environment changed from the R1 settings of my undergraduate through postdoctoral training to working in the California State University system. Although I have maintained my primary research area, it requires some effort to stay in touch with emerging trends in the field, as I am the only person at SJSU who does Humanities-based work in Chicanx Studies. Moreover, I had not attended a conference in a couple of years, and so I welcomed this year’s LSA as an opportunity to fully engage as both a presenter and participant, and to expand my professional network. Continue reading

Writing for Mujeres Talk

by the Editorial Group

As an online venue dedicated to the publication of Latina, Chicana, and Native American Studies research, commentary, and creative work that is widely accessible to both specialist and non-specialist audiences, we’ve often been asked by potential authors to provide guidelines on how to write for this site. In answer to this request, we’d like to share our experience in writing and editing for this site, and provide a guide for authors.

The Academic Journal Article

Throughout one’s career, academics receive extensive training in how to write a scholarly article for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. That training begins with the assignment of the seminar paper in a graduate course and workshops on publishing in graduate school. As a new professor, one receives further training in the form of workshops, mentorship from senior faculty, actual peer review feedback on submissions, participation in peer reviewing the work of others, and the ongoing reading of academic journals and volumes. Through this process, one learns how to craft a publishable academic journal article appropriate to a specific field. As should be apparent, this doesn’t happen overnight. There is a learning curve. For this reason, we at Mujeres Talk are not surprised when we occasionally hear back from a potential author who we’ve invited to submit that, “I don’t know how to write in that format,” or “I don’t have time to learn how to do that.” The working conditions in higher education have, indeed, changed significantly, and it’s no surprise that many academics barely have time to do what is expected and required of them for their regular appointments, let alone a kind of writing that may have more limited impact on tenure and promotion than traditional forms of scholarly publication (books, journal articles).

The Online Academic Essay: Actual Experience

Yet, academics and non-academics alike do write for Mujeres Talk, and for a variety of reasons, including:

·      To make Latina and Native American Studies contributions to media and public policy discussions

·      Interest in online dialogue on topics of importance to academic and non-academic audiences

·      Contribute to public discussion of humanities, and research in ethnic studies

·      Promotion of a recent publication or film

·      Opportunity to analyze current events

·      Widely share “how-to” information and guidance

·      Interest in collaborating with others in co-authored pieces

·      Provide mentorship and support to Latinas and Native American women in academia

·      Report on events, conferences, lectures

·      Engage students in interactive assignments.

These wide-ranging reasons for interest in our site has meant that Mujeres Talk has published several different types of short essay – “Dichos” or advice for academics; commentary on current events; personal reflections on research, community work, or current events; research in brief; biographic profiles; analyses of film or literature; and book reviews. We’ve also published three different kinds of multimedia artifacts: slide shows, graphic book; and short video. Three of our authors have used Mujeres Talk for class assignments. In one case, faculty author Ella Diaz wrote about the visit of artist Ana Teresa Fernandez to her school and assigned students to comment on their engagement with this artist and her art. In another instance, faculty author Brenda Sendejo collaborated with students in her Latina/o and Latin American Spiritualities course to co-write a piece on identity, social justice, and spirituality. In a third example, faculty author Theresa Delgadillo wrote an essay on Latinas/os in a popular television program that she also assigned her class to write, and then invited the class to engage in online dialogue on their shared assignment.

Essays that first appeared on Mujeres Talk have been republished on sites such as Share INC/Domestic Violence, Texas Ed Equity, and Puerto Rico Today. Our modified form of peer review has been cited by the US Intellectual History website. And we have collaborated in simultaneous posts with the websites HASTAC, La Bloga, and Somebody’s Children. We do not keep count of the thousands of spams and random hits the site receives, but we do track the number of page views/reads for each new post, and these have steadily climbed and now range between 400 and 1000 per post. Our subscriber list has grown to 194. Anyone can comment on our site, and we’ve received multiple comments from across the country on posts. We notify our growing list of followers on Facebook and Twitter of new posts, as well as related news. Since 2011, we have published 121 essays or multimedia presentations on this site.

Benefits of Writing for Mujeres Talk or Another Online Venue

Both academic and community authors who have contributed to our site have recognized multiple benefits from this experience, including:

·      Learning how to write for online media

·      Publicizing one’s expertise

·      Enhancing one’s online research profile or that of one’s program, department, or school so that others interested in areas you research can easily find you

·      Getting early feedback on work-in-progress.

Authors retain the copyright to the work they publish on Mujeres Talk and, with citation, may reproduce their short form research or online essay in longer journal articles or scholarly manuscripts on their research, or in other kinds of print or online publications.

Tips for Writing for Mujeres Talk

For authors interested in multimedia submissions, we encourage you to research readily available software for making short videos, graphic books, and slide shows to share. For those of you interested in learning how to write the kind of short essay we usually publish, we offer the following tips and questions as a guide:

·      Our upper word limit is 1500, and that means you can only say one or two things well. Your topic can be big, but your insight must be focused.

·      Imagine your audience. Who are you writing to? Is it a group of close colleagues? A public lecture open to anyone at your university? A conference-like gathering of people in your field? Be sure your essay addresses that audience. And then remember that your friend brought along some folks who would also like to understand your work, so make sure a non-specialist can follow it.

·      Write yourself into the essay, making apparent your investment, interest, and/or personal experience with the topic. This is especially important if you are writing a personal reflection or personally inflected commentary. It might be important if you are writing a review, but this advice is less likely to apply to essays that present research in brief.

·      Be generous to other Latina/o and Native American scholars and students.

·      Pose a question in your essay. This is a good way to invite readers in to dialogue.

·      Provide citations, references, shout-outs, and links where appropriate.

·      Save some good stuff for the peer review journal article that will carry greater weight in tenure and promotion.

If you’re interested in writing commentary about a current event or reporting on a lecture, conference, or concert, you might begin a draft of your essay by jotting down some short answers to these questions:

·      What event are you interested in writing about?

·      Why is this event important to Mujeres Talk audiences?

·      Do you want readers to do something about this current event or do you want them to know something about this event? If you answer “do something” explain what and provide links. If you answer “know something” explain what, and include citations.

·      If there is currently public discussion about this event, what are the views currently circulating? How is yours different?

·      How did you become interested in this event? What personal experience do you have with this event?

If you’re interested in writing research in brief, consider which piece of your ongoing, original research you want to publish in this format. Like academic journals, we seek unpublished, original work. Unlike academic journals, we only publish in short format. Keeping that distinction in mind, consider writing about a concept in your research, or how that concept has been critically regarded, or one example of the kind of analysis you are engaging, or a small piece of your findings. The short form research essay will not be as extensive or as complete as the academic journal article, but it does need to be as rigorous and engaging as any more extended work.

Since this is a distillation of our experience, we thank all the women who have ever served on the  Editorial Group of Mujeres Talk and all the authors who have published on this site. A special thank you to Diana Rivera of Michigan State University who recently completed a one year term on our Editorial Group for her wise advice and guidance in creating mechanisms to ensure the continued success of the site.

Mexican Panda: My Short Life in Film School

by Linda Garcia Merchant

TITLE: Mexican Panda SCENE 1: EXTERIOR, SAN JUAN TEOTIHAUCÁN, MEXICO, PYRAMID OF THE SUN, POST NUCLEAR SPRING 2450AD, EARLY MORNING As the sun rises on a Post Nuclear Spring in 2450AD we see a wide tracking shot across the horizon of San Juan Teotihuacán Mexico with the Pyramid of the Sun in shadow. As the camera moves in on the dimly lit and foreboding pyramid we see the slight movement of Mexican grizzly bears at play. As the camera moves in we see they are not bears but Pandas. Three black and white Pandas chasing and catching a fourth black and tan Mexican Panda, beating it to death, then throwing the Panda off the Pyramid. The dead Panda lands on the ground at the feet of another black and tan Mexican Panda who has witnessed the murder. His eyes meet those of the three murdering Pandas now wiping the blood from their paws onto their fur. The three Pandas being to climb down the Pyramid towards Mexican Panda. He turns to run away from the Pyramid and into the forest.

Instructor: You said this is a fantasy? Me: Well yes and no. It’s an experimental fantasy with a moral lesson. The Pandas are a metaphor, you know symbolic of resistance to difference in the simple purity of their new world. Instructor: You should make them elephants. The Pandas. Make them elephants and it will work. Me: I can’t see elephants being able to climb or chase anything on a pyramid. Instructor: You did say it was experimental? You want us to suspend belief for your argument? Make them elephants. Me: I don’t understand why I need to do that. The Mexican Panda could exist if the post nuclear climate changed enough to create and support vegetation and atmosphere necessary for their survival. It is a hybridized creature born of the combination of Coati and grizzly bear, both existing in Mexico prior to the nuclear holocaust. It is probable even if it is experimental. Instructor: You have to consider your audience. I don’t understand Pandas with moral arguments. I understand Elephants.

While this conversation never actually happened during my time spent as a first year MFA in Film and Video at Columbia College in Chicago, many variations of it did. It was always the same, defending a script, a character, my choice of language, a setting, or even my moral arguments. I often felt like the fictional Mexican Panda character I’ve created above, similar to but definitely not the same as the other film school Pandas. I certainly experienced the same symbolic outcome as that of my Mexican Panda. The opportunity to get a teaching degree has been crushed and I have been hurled from the academic pyramid.

I remember getting the call about being accepted into the program; it came three days after my interview. It was 2008. I was in Austin, at Martha Cotera’s office/shrine to Chicana Feminism, scanning photographs for Sylvia Morales’ new film. The tone in my voice made Martha turn away from her desk to face me and, with a serious look on her face ask, “Is everything okay?” I told her the news: I had been accepted as a first year film student with a Follett Fellowship, the top prize for first year students which was full tuition for a year. That night we celebrated. When I called my momma in El Paso, she began to cry.

Two years earlier I had created Voces Primeras, a documentary film production company to capture the history of pioneering Latinas. I had made my first film about women I knew who had worked with mom in the movements, Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana (2007). I had spoken to everyone my mother knew about what I was doing. They all introduced me to other people from community organizations and universities. I learned about MALCS, NACCS and NWSA. It was at NWSA where I was introduced to the idea of going back to school and getting a terminal degree to be able to teach. It would be a way to engage and encourage other young people to want to do this work as I could not do it alone. I applied to Columbia College in Chicago because I liked the idea that I could bring my stories to a place that could teach me how to tell those stories on film. I wanted to be a great filmmaker and I was beginning to think that was possible.

Becoming a filmmaker is like learning another language. You master a language as you begin to think in that language. As a filmmaker, you learn to react to events and circumstances by assessing the scale of drama or how the dialogue or storyline will play out. Good filmmakers are always thinking about their stories. Great filmmakers live them. I had ideas about films I wanted to do and voiced these throughout my year in film school. I knew my skills in marketing and promotion would make distributing those films possible, but I also knew I needed to learn the language and processes of production. I defended my right to make the films I wanted, challenging every suggested change to my characters and their storylines. I do not recall hearing in any of the of the introductory sessions in graduate film school that defending my art was not allowed.

I lived for the conversations with my classmates, learning so much about the structure of writing scripts and creating shot lists. Teaching them about self promotion, helping them find locations in and around the city. We encouraged each other about character development and emotional arcs.  I can remember so many conversations from that year since first walking into the film school’s doors at 11th and Wabash. The conversation changed completely at the end of that first year, after my Focus Film review, a requirement to continue in the program that was critical of my independence and that ended with a recommendation that I leave the program.

It has been five years since I was dismissed. My classmates have produced their thesis films and I have gone to their screenings. I frequently walk past the building that marked my period of brief promise within the academy. I do not often enter and when I do I am always expecting someone to jump out at me and yell “GET OUT. That building continues to be a reminder of my failure to connect to a community and process required for teaching. It is a scar that sometimes opens, sometimes bleeds and never quite heals.

So in February of 2014, when I went to the first screening of The Black Sheep Roundtable, the Black Film Society’s (BFS) film about their Columbia College experience. I went to support their work. I thought, how brave to break the code of silence and speak to the challenging nature of film school. I was still afraid of that code. For five years I had not spoken publicly about that year. I was frightened, embarrassed, self conscious, self doubting, and thinking that these things had only happened to me.

As I watched these students sharing their pain, frustrations, and rejections I knew that if I would not reveal my own tragic journey, I would at least stand up and say how proud I was of their bravery. I shared enough to prompt the students to ask to hear my story and to include that interview in the final film. I said yes, praying on the train ride home that this was the right thing to do.

I went home and to the basement to open the plastic boxes marked “Columbia: Do Not Touch.”  At the very top of the neatly packed materials was my dismissal letter. I sat on the floor reading the letter, class notes, and then my final paper on the Virgen de Guadalupe as Oppressor in the film Maria Candelaria (Xochimilco) (1944).

I went to the interview with BFS student filmmakers a few days later with my letter and final paper, along with newspaper articles about my work, posters from festivals and screenings, some awards and a journal article I had written. All the things I had done while in school. The interview went quickly. I got more emotional and personal than I thought I would.
It would be a few weeks before the next screening of the newly edited film that would include my interview. During that time I thought about how completely that short year of school changed my life. A month after I was dismissed, I began working with Maria Cotera on Chicana Por Mi Raza. It would take another two years before I felt confident enough to take on making a narrative short and even then, the validation didn’t happen until in a critical scene I knew we had the money shot. I was sure then that one day I would be a great director.

I went to the screening of the final cut alone. My stomach in knots and my heart leaping from my chest, I walked into the packed theater and saw a number of faculty, the president of the college and the chairman of the department. I sat in the very last row, three seats from the exit. I was sitting next to one of the professors from the application interview. I heard nothing and felt even less. When the lights went down and the film began, my mouth began to water and I felt nauseous, but I stayed in that seat and willed myself to watch.

It got easier, each time I came on the screen, what I said was appropriate to the points being made. By the end of the film, all I could think was, what really smart choices the director made about all the contributions.

The lights came up, the students read a statement of suggestions for improvement, thanked everyone for coming and then had a Q&A. There were two screenings that night and people for the second screening were milling around the back doors waiting for the Q&A to end. The president spoke about diversity and that the bigger systemic issues needed to be addressed. The chairman said nothing. A few of the faculty offered solutions that included courses already being taught and a willingness to work with the students to make changes. I said nothing.

The faculty left, a few more came in, the professor sitting next to me said I had done a good job articulating my pain. I told him that it was hard and it still is. He patted my arm and smiled and said it was good to see me.

The second screening, also packed, included a lot more community members and students, and colleagues I had invited. During the Q&A one of those colleagues asked the BFS students how they knew of my story. Reina, the president of the BFS student group, pointed to me and asked if I would like to share. I said that an understanding about diversity did exist at the school and it came in the face of a black man, a white man and a white woman. I said that I learned how to write scripts and direct films from these three people, who were willing to have the hard conversations about process with me. I said what I’ve learned is still gospel and is what has enabled me to make at least one award winning narrative short.

Lots of friends and family and colleagues that have seen the film online have said how proud they are of me for finally speaking up about this. I have also learned that the embarrassment, failure and self doubt I felt were wasted emotions, as I did nothing wrong. I was vocal about defending my stories and art to a world that insisted I make films that only spoke to a broader, mainstream audience.

I really want to believe that Columbia College will listen to the voices of its black film students. I hope the lesson learned is that all art has equal value. I hope that the stories of film students of color and the body of work produced by filmmakers of color, is given the importance and attention that other filmmakers receive. The students of color pay no less tuition to attend these schools. Based on this fact alone their demands for equal resources has merit.

In a fair and level world the academic pyramid would see the tremendous potential of every filmmaker walking though those doors. Students, eager to learn about technique and craft to then apply that foundation to their stories. Stories cultivated from history and imagination and manner just waiting for a space to become real. Even if the world is not fair and level, the administration could create a space within the college that supports the talents of all of its students. How many truly great films and performances could come from a space where we are all equal, have value and can learn from each other?

Ultimately the academic pyramid can and will have to accommodate both this Mexican and the non-Mexican Panda. We can’t all be killed off or made in to elephants.

SCENE 2: EXTERIOR JUNGLE THREE DAYS LATER MID AFTERNOON
Mexican Panda, running and hiding for three days through the wilderness, comes upon a small break in the jungle, that ends by a small pool. He sees other black and white Pandas with cubs, some of which are black and tan like him. He watches for a very long time before coming closer to the small but happy group, some swimming in the pool, others cleaning fruit. A girl Panda sees him watching from a distance and motions him to come closer. She is smiling.

Linda Garcia Merchant is an independent filmmaker and digital media producer. She has created several short independent films both individually and in collaboration with others. A native of Chicago and life-long Midwestern Chicana, she  is a 2014 Contributing Blogger on Mujeres Talk.

 

María Teresa Márquez and CHICLE: The First Chicana/o Electronic Mailing List

By Miguel Juárez

These days we take e-mail and electronic lists for granted, but imagine a world where there is no e-mail or exchange of information like we have now?  That was the world for Humanities Librarian María Teresa Márquez at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Zimmerman Library and creator of CHICLE, the first Chicana/o electronic mailing list created in 1991, to focus on Latino literature and later on the social sciences. [1] Other Chicano/Latino listservs include Roberto Vásquez’s Lared Latina of the Intermountain Southwest (Lared-L) [2] created in 1996, and Roberto Calderon’s Historia-L, created in March 2003. [3] These electronic lists were influential in expanding communication and opportunities among Chicanas/os. CHICLE, nevertheless, deserves wider recognition as a pioneering effort whose importance has been overlooked.

In many instances the Internet revolution was shepherded by librarians in their institutions. Libraries and librarians were early adopters of this new technology. Márquez used computers and e-mail in her work in the Government Information Department at UNM. However, it was in the Library and Information Science Program at California State University, Fullerton, where she first learned about and used computers in a federally-funded program in the 1970s that sought to increase the number of Mexican American librarians. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Márquez earned a Certificate of Advanced Study in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, where she learned more about computers and databases.

In April 1991, Márquez attended the Nineteenth Annual Conference (Los Dos Méxicos) of the National Association of [Chicana and ] Chicano Studies (NACS) in Hermosillo, Sonora, México. One of the panels, moderated by Professor Francisco Lomelí, University of California, Santa Barbara, presented papers on “Literatura Chicana.”  While discussing the topic, scholars raised problems encountered in communicating with each other and in sharing information on new publications and current research. Márquez volunteered to create a listserv or electronic mailing list and explained how it could be of use in keeping scholars informed. At UNM, she developed the list and Professor Erlinda V. Gonzales-Berry, then a faculty member in the UNM Spanish Department, coined its name-CHICLE (which translates into gum in Spanish). CHICLE stood for Chicana/Chicano Literature Exchange.

According to Márquez, most faculty members were not willing to join CHICLE, citing no experience with computers nor did they wish to consider its potential use in academic work. Yet, Márquez launched CHICLE with eight subscribers. She attended numerous academic conferences to distribute fliers and talk to people about the list and recruit subscribers. Furthermore, she attempted to impress upon her listeners the need to be at the forefront of technology, but Márquez said she had few takers. Believing in the importance of the list and in this new form of communication, she persevered and she states: “One day, all of a sudden, membership went up to 800!” As more institutions and faculty members started using computers, the list exploded in the number of subscribers.

The idea for the list evolved from Márquez’s work in a library setting that was used to basically communicating internally. At first Márquez sent out all of the information on the list because she had most of it. She would use librarian’s tools and lists of new books, information of upcoming conferences, calls for papers, and articles that would be of interest, but she received very little in return. The list was limited to her contributions in its early years. Later, as the number of subscribers in the social sciences increased the list moved away from literature. Numerous topics were discussed over the list’s ten–year history (1991-2001), but eventually its popularity led to its demise. Subscribers often stated that the list contained too much information and was time consuming.

Among the active subscribers to CHICLE was archivist Dorinda Moreno, [4] who later went on to work with Lared as well as with Dr. Robert Calderón‘s Historia-L. Moreno contributed history-related information. In contrast to Márquez’s effort, Calderón changed his list to a closed list with a finite number of subscribers where he posted items of interest to the Chicano/a academic community, as opposed to CHICLE which was an open forum. [5] Initially CHICLE was designed as an open forum to encourage broad participation. Dr. Tey Mariana Nunn, now Director and Chief Curator of the Art Museum and Visual Arts Program at the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum in Albuquerque, played a large role in promoting the list in its early days. Nunn was a graduate work-study student. Additionally, Renee Stephens, now at San Francisco State University, then a graduate work-study student at UNM, was also editor for the list, a task inherited from Janice Gould. All these women were instrumental in the success of CHICLE. Eventually, the expansion of the Internet eclipsed Chicana/o listservs.

When CHICLE began, Márquez acted as the sole moderator, but over time, as it gained popularity, she trained students to run it. The popular list existed until her funding to hire work-study students ran out. Her institution was reluctant to provide further support. CHICLE was not considered an appropriate academic part of Márquez’s professional responsibilities. Management of the list competed with duties at the library and as subscriptions grew, it became overwhelming and difficult. Márquez who often managed the list on her own time, stated she would have continued the list but that  it would have required more energy than she was willing to invest. When Márquez decided it was time to move on and discontinue the list, she approached the UNM Technical Center to store the CHICLE files. The Center claimed it did not have sufficient storage space for her files. As news of CHICLE’s imminent shutdown spread, people volunteered to keep the list going but were deterred by the amount of work entailed.

Dr. Diana I. Rios, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Communication and El Instituto at the University of Connecticut among others, made attempts to create an archive of CHICLE.  She made copies of conversations via cut and paste. There were attempts to incorporate CHICLE into another list but Ríos did not want that to happen. Eventually, Latino literary blogs such as Pluma Fronteriza [6] and La Bloga [7] emerged to continue where CHICLE left off.

After CHICLE, Márquez took her energy and enthusiasm in supporting Latina/o students and created a program called CHIPOTLE. [8] She used CHIPOTLE to familiarize Chicana/o rural students with the academic environment and to reach out to surrounding communities. Via grant and affiliated department funded sponsorship, Márquez would take posters and boxes of books by Chicana/Chicano writers to give to students when she visited Hispanic-dominate schools. As part of CHIPOTLE, she created a forum to bring Latina/o speakers into the library and encouraged Latina/o students to utilize the research resources available to them. She directed two programs funded by Rudolfo Anaya: Premío Aztlán and Critica Nueva. Premío Aztlán recognized emerging Chicana/o writers and Critica Nueva was an award honoring the foremost scholars who produced a body of literary criticism based on Chicana/o literature. For many years, Márquez was the only Latina librarian at the University of New Mexico University Libraries. Presently, she is an Associate Professor Emerita. No Latina/o librarians have been hired since her retirement.

In the era of search engines, web browsers, blogs, wiki’s, intranets, and social media, it is important to recognize the efforts of a pioneering Chicana librarian and a pioneering electronic list that was a unique cultural creation. It was given life by so many who read it, posted on it, and worked on it. CHICLE brought many voices together and established a foundation for the future. As Márquez stated, “CHICLE was the catalyst for many things.” [9]

[1] María Teresa Márquez, interview by the author, Albuquerque, April 28, 2007.  [2] Lared Latina of the Intermountain Southwest, was established in the Spring of 1996 by Roberto Vásquez, as a World Wide Web Forum, for the purpose of disseminating socio-political, cultural, educational, and economic information about Latinos in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe Metro area and the Intermountain Region which includes Metropolitan Areas such as the Salt Lake City/Ogden region, Denver, Phoenix, Tucson, Boise, Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, accessed January 30, 2014: http://www.lared-latina.com/bio.html.  [3] Dr. Roberto R. Calderón, interview by the author, College Station, Texas, December 20, 2007. Historia-l, focused on Chicano/a history, started as “96SERADC” with 200 subscribers in May 1996 and continued through October 1997. Originally housed at the University of Washington, it helped mobilize the first Immigrant Rights March on Washington, D.C., held on Saturday, October 12, 1996. The march had upwards of 50,000 participants, half of whom were Latina/o college students from across the country. The listserv list then changed venues and was housed at the University of California at Riverside becoming “2000SERADC,” from November 1997 through August 1999, at which point the listserv list was discontinued. This twice-named listserv list project lasted three-and-a-half-years. [4] Dorinda Moreno, Chicano/native Apache (Mother, Grandmother, Great Grandmother) has worked bridging Elders, Women of Color, Inter-generational networks and alliances, with a focus on non-racist, non-sexist (LGBT community), non-toxic–Chicano/a, Mexicano/a, Latino/a, Indigenous communities, projects and networks that give voice to under-represented groups and enable feminist empowerment through social change networks and innovations. As an early Web pioneer and archivist, she has been actively using the Internet since 1973. [5] Calderón interview.  [6] Pluma Fronteriza began as a printed newsletter, then became a blog and currently has a companion site on Facebook:  Accessed February 8, 2014: http://plumafronteriza.blogspot.com/  [7] La Bloga hosts various bloggers who write on Latino/a literature.  Accessed February 8, 2014: http://labloga.blogspot.com/  [8] According to the Memidex Online Dictionary and Thesaurus, Chipotle comes from the Nahuatl word chilpoctli meaning “smoked chili pepper” is a smoke-dried jalapeño, accessed January 30, 2014, http://www.memidex.com/chipotles. [9] Márquez interview.

Miguel Juárez is a doctoral student in Borderlands History at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). He has a Masters in Library Science (MLS) degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Masters of Arts (MA) in Border History from UTEP. In 1997, he published the book: Colors on Desert Walls: the Murals of El Paso (Texas Western Press). Miguel has curated numerous exhibits, as well as written articles in academic journals, newsletters, and newspapers focusing on librarianship, archives, and the cultural arts. From 1998 to 2008, Miguel worked as an academic librarian at the following institutions and centers: State University of New York at Buffalo; Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona; Texas A&M in College Station, TX; and the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) at UCLA. He is also co-editor with Rebecca Hankins of the upcoming book Where Are All the Librarians of Color? The Experiences of People of Color in Academia, part of the Series on Critical Multiculturalism in Information Studies of Litwin Books. The author would like to thank María Teresa Márquez, Dr. Roberto Calderón, Dorinda Moreno, Dr. Tey Mariana Nunn, Renee Stephens, Rebecca Hankins and Dr. Diana Ríos for making suggestions and recommendations for this article. This work is part of a larger body of research on Chicana/o electronic and digital projects during the advent of the Internet.

Welcome to 2014 Contributing Bloggers

We write today to welcome the inaugural group of Mujeres Talk Contributing Bloggers. Kimberly Blaeser, Linda Garcia Merchant and Elena Herrada have agreed to serve in this position for 2014. As Contributing Bloggers, Blaeser, Merchant and Herrada will be writing for Mujeres Talk throughout the year — so look for their posts! Mujeres Talk readers will remember that Kimberly Blaeser’s poem “Dictionary for a New Century,” launched our 2014 year, and we’re looking forward to more poetry as well as commentary and research this year. An independent filmmaker, Merchant will be writing about some of her current film and research projects. Herrada, who has been active in multiple Detroit communities, plans to write about community projects and experiences.

All three of our 2014 Contributing Bloggers are from the Midwest: Blaeser grew up on the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota and currently lives and works in Wisconsin; Merchant grew up in and continues to reside in Chicago, Illinois; and Herrada is a lifelong resident of Detroit, Michigan. Their long and rich experience and research in Native American, Chicana/o, African American and Latina/o communities of the Midwest brings additional breadth and depth to Mujeres Talk, and to multiple academic and artistic fields. We invite you to visit the 2014 Contributing Bloggers page on our site to learn more about the newest members of the Mujeres Talk project.

 

We Need Documentaries About Latina Americans, Too

Chicana Power by Flickr User Kris Kables

Chicana Power by Flickr User Kris Kables, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

By Miroslava Chávez-García

A few months ago, while I screened Sylvia Morales’s La Chicana (1979), a film about the historical and contemporary roles of Mexican and Mexican American women in the United States, it hit me that before this film no one had pieced together a comprehensive look at the continuities between Chicanas and Mexicanas on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Sitting in my class, along with ninety of my students, I realized that Morales was among the first to create a documentary on the lives of women of Mexican- and indigenous-descent as they shaped and influenced the histories of their families, communities and societies through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also struck me that no one had done anything similar since then. Morales’s follow up thirty years later, A Crushing Love (2009), for instance, focused primarily on a smaller group of Chicanas. Today, we have yet to see a comprehensive film tracing women’s roles and relations in areas of the economy and polity as well as in the cultural and social life of Spanish-speaking peoples. In my view, this is a sad commentary on the state of Chicana and Mexicana history in film.

Unfortunately, the PBS Latino Americans (2013) series does little to rectify the gaping hole in the filmic representation of Chicanas, Mexicanas and Mexican American women, particularly in the first two episodes. It is true that women are mentioned and do appear in the Latino Americans series, but it is as members of the elite or as “women worthies.”  Seldom are the ordinary women’s lives rendered in a way that gives us a sense of what their lives were like in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Moreover, in no instance do the early episodes in the series focus on the role of gender and sexuality in shaping conquest and colonization – a theme explored by many historians of Spanish-speaking women in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Antonia Castañeda for instance, has described vividly the ways in which Spanish soldiers’ rape of California Indian women was part and parcel of the Spanish Crown’s attempt to retake control of its northern territory. Those same acts of war, however, nearly threatened the entire enterprise when California Indians launched repeated reprisals against the indignities suffered by their communities. Gender, as many scholars now agree, was pivotal to many other areas of life, including family and community formation, inheritance, and family networks as well migration and immigration. However, the film granted little attention to the ways in which ideas about men and women’s roles in their families, communities and societies influenced Spanish-speaking communities.

As a historian, I recognize that Latino Americans addresses many of the themes I cover in my Chicana and Chicano Studies introductory courses, and does so in a way appealing to a general audience. I enjoyed, for instance, learning about the personal experiences of repatriation as told through the eyes of the woman whose family was returned in 1935 when she was a young girl. I found her story heart breaking and not just because she — along with up to 500,000 peoples of Mexican-descent – were forced to go to a country many of them had never known before, but also because of her mother’s earlier death to tuberculosis, a disease that ravaged Mexicanos living in Los Angeles at the time. Motherless and now landless, she and her family were forced to come to terms with survival. I was left wondering as to how the loss of her mother had re-arranged their family dynamics and how it impacted her in the long term. While we learned that she left school to help her father, we know less about how that experience shaped her future as a young woman coming of age in Mexico and later, the United States.

I note these gaps not to blast the “failures” of the Latino Americans series, but rather to remind us and everybody else that we – as members of the public — still have little understanding of the ways in which gender and sexuality shaped Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S. Southwest. What we need is a richly textured, nuanced and in-depth filmic representation of Chicanas, Mexicanas and Mexican American women in the past and present. We currently lack representations of Latinas in all their diversity, including regional, racial/ethnic and class status. Such representations are long overdue. It is my hope that the Latino Americans series has inspired others to take a long look at the role and relations of mujeres shaping their families and communities as well as the larger society. These are stories that still need to be told.

Dr. Miroslava Chávez-García is a Professor in the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Chávez-García is the author of States of Delinquency: Race and Science in the Making of California’s Juvenile Justice System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012) and Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006).

The Goal is Simple: Protect, Conserve and Archive the Chicano/a and Latino/a Experience in the Southwest

2011 photo "Miner Mural, Detail (Superior, Arizona)" by Cobalt123

2011 photo “Miner Mural, Detail (Superior, Arizona)” by Cobalt123

By Dr. Christine Marin

Chicano and/or Mexican American student activism during the era of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement was the “mother” of that creation known in 1969-1970 as Chicano Studies Collections, usually housed in university library departments called Ethnic Studies or Archives and Special Collections. Since then, the southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas have seen the rising interest in the research and scholarship of Chicana/o, Mexican American, Hispanic, and Latina/o students and faculty, and others of course, who continue to press their libraries to collect and house primary and secondary sources in Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies. For example, the Chicano/a Research Collection at the Hayden Library at Arizona State University; the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the Library, University of Texas-Austin; the Chicano Studies Library at the University of California-Berkeley; the Chicano Studies Research Library in Los Angeles; and the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives at the University of California-Santa Barbara have enjoyed great success in the decades following the Chicano Civil Rights Movement.

Archivists at Chicana/o and Latina/o repositories and university libraries seek to document and protect the rights of these cultural communities by capturing their collective memories. Through these efforts, we work to ensure access to Hispanic/Mexican/Mexican American and Latina/o histories and expand future opportunities. We work, in short, to preserve these legacies for students, faculty, researchers, writers, and scholars today and in the future. It is easy to understand why it is the duty of the archivist to value and appreciate the complexity and diversity of Mexicana/o and Latina/o communities and to collect, preserve, and make accessible materials that are representative of their culture and history. Materials acquired are often unique, specialized or one-of-a-kind. For example, they might be rare legal or business documents in Spanish; or written letters that describe life experiences across the U.S.-Mexico border; or marriage, school or religious documents of the late 1890s or early 1900s. They are to be preserved for use today and also for future generations of researchers. They are to be protected from theft, physical damage, or deterioration. It stands to reason that Chicana/o and Latina/o archival repositories are now the intellectual gate-keepers of cultural knowledge with archivists playing a significant role in their university’s ability to attract and retain Latina/o faculty and students.

At the Society of American Archivists’ (SAA) Annual Meeting at the University of California in Los Angeles in 2003, a pre-conference event titled Memoria, Voz y Patrimonio (Memory, Voice and Heritage) challenged participants to consider their roles as archivists and representatives of local communities in Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies. The gathering addressed questions about the acquisition, preservation, and maintenance of archival materials in light of new technologies in archiving Latina/o history, identity, and spirit. Those present discussed the importance of preserving primary sources in print, but also addressed the necessity of preserving and archiving films, photographs, ephemera, broadsides (posters), videos, cassette tapes, and reel-to-reel tapes.  This work requires archivists to learn new technologies, and in 2003 those at the SAA pre-conference were coping with new challenges in using computers, electronic databases and records, and other new technologies — all so that they could teach patrons and students how to access information in their archival repositories. Those of us working in Chicana/o and Latina/o archival repositories or libraries learn to interweave our duties and responsibilities in collection development, reference services, outreach, research, publishing, and service. This interdependence represents the highest level of professionalism in the work of an archivist, historian, or librarian. The 2003 SAA pre-conference made it clear, too, that financial and human resources are important tools in calling attention to the importance of Chicana/o and Latina/o archives and libraries in the southwestern region and elsewhere. That point is still important to consider today in these times of lean archives and library budgets.

Chicana/o and Latina/o archivists take very seriously their role in supporting repositories and libraries and in ensuring access to collections that house the cultural achievements and records of contributions to state and regional development of Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. They work with potential donors, community activists, labor organizers, teachers, educators, entrepreneurs, performing artists, writers, historians, and others whose personal archives provide meaning and context to their own legacies.

Many archivists work with local high schools and programs aimed at increasing the admission rates of Latina/o students to community colleges or universities and their success in higher education. A case in point: an archivist at an Arizona university provides workshops on oral history and methodology and helps high school teachers learn how to train students in capturing the stories and narratives of Latina/o and Chicana/o community members. The completed oral histories or filmed documentaries produced by these students and gathered by the teacher are placed in the university library’s Chicana/o and Latina/o archival repository where they are accessible to researchers and others with an interest in that community’s history. In so doing, high school students gain a better understanding of how and why their research becomes an important resource for others. Another archivist might provide orientations or tours of a Chicana/o and Latina/o archival repository to high school students as a way for them to understand the importance of using the resources in a university library and archives.  In 2004, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) conducted the “Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States.”[1] At least 108 Latina/o or Hispanic SAA members reported that they “learned about the value of archives from using them.”  Perhaps these archivists were exposed to archival repositories as high school students and grew to understand the role they would play in their own experiences as college and university students. Today, our work with K-12 students may spur them on to want to become archivists in a Chicana/o and Latina/o collections.

There are new challenges, however, on the western horizons of Chicana/o and Latina/o history and its archives that may impact their continued availability to researchers. These new challenges are not merely financial ones. Instead, they are political challenges to Chicana/o and Latina/o communities that are also linked to the work of the archivists. In 2010, for example, new controversy and tensions surrounding Chicana/o Studies and recent legislation in Arizona makes archivists question their work in a southern Arizona high school district. Arizona’s state superintendent of public instruction said the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program taught in the public high school in an urban center violated a state law banning courses that “promote resentment toward another race or class.”[2] The school district appealed and in late 2011, a state administrative law judge affirmed the decision and the MAS program was eliminated from the public school curriculum. Elimination of a high school curriculum not only makes it more difficult for students to be successful at a community college or university level, but it also curtails a successful collaboration between the university library and high schools in collecting archival materials.

In 2010, political tensions in the Chicana/o and Latina/o communities of Arizona surrounding immigration laws began anew. Individuals of Mexican or Latina/o heritage currently represent over thirty percent of Arizona’s citizens.[3] They make important contributions to Arizona in many ways. Arizona’s history is rich in cultural diversity and its history must be preserved in order to enable as complete an understanding of the state as much as possible, yet these new tensions impact the collection of primary source materials, relationships with donors, and funding or endowment projects to preserve individual and family archives. Would monetary donations for the preservation of Chicana/o and Latina/o collections need to be returned? Are Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies programs, courses and archives all at risk? Is financial support for and use of Chicana/o and Latina/o archival repositories at these university or community college libraries also at risk?

The political ramifications of questions like these impact a wider range of constituents,  archivists and major university libraries outside the state of Arizona. These risks have been met with another wave of Chicana/o and Latina/o student and faculty activism that has created fresh  support for new Chicana/o and Latina/o archival repositories and programs and for new positions and appointments at major university libraries. For example, in the summer of 2010, the Chicana/o archival collection  “Unidos Por La Causa: the Chicana and Chicano Experience in San Diego,” made its debut in the San Diego State University Library.[4] This Chicana and Chicano Studies Archive was created through the efforts of a committee of librarians, archivists, library staff, professors, and community activists. In another example, the California State University at Los Angeles (CSULA) Library recently celebrated the establishment of the East Los Angeles Archives to “advance scholarship in Chicano/Latino studies and Los Angeles history through the collection of primary research materials.” Other university libraries are seeking Chicana/o and Latina/o archivists to fill newly created academic positions and appointments. Their main responsibilities are to begin and build new Chicana/o and Latina/o archives in folklore, music, rare books, and manuscripts. We can see this at the University of Texas-Pan American, which offers a new archivist opportunities to engage in research and writing and to develop manuscript collections that focus on Latina/os, Border Studies, and Mexican folklore. The University of North Texas Libraries in Denton sought a Latina/o archivist to coordinate with a high-level university library administrator in acquiring new Chicana/o and Latina/o archival collections. The Mexican Studies Institute opened at the City University of New York (CUNY) with a goal of establishing Mexican, Mexican American, and Chicana/o Studies courses in New York City high schools. A Latino/a archivist or librarian will most likely assist faculty in the creation and implementation of this endeavor and begin to collect books and materials for the Institute.

At the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists in San Diego, titled  “Beyond Borders,” Latina/o archivists engaged in discussions and presentations about the importance of collecting the experiences of Latinas whose stories continue to remain invisible or ignored; the collection of  Spanish-language primary sources to tell the history of the American West and Mexico; and the  importance of collaboration between archivists on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in order to gather research on the experiences of undocumented Mexicans in today’s politically-charged borderlands environment, one that views Mexican immigrants unfavorably.

Archivists are guided by professional core values and codes of ethics that outline their professional responsibilities. These include collection of a “diversity of viewpoints on social, political, and intellectual issues, as represented…in archival records.”[5] That is our commitment, because we know that the public will benefit from the knowledge and insight generated through study of these materials.


[1] Beaumont, Nancy P, and Victoria I. Walch. Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States, 2004. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2005. Internet resource.  [2] Grado, Gary. “Arizona’s Ethnic Studies Attorneys Use TUSD Officials’ Words Against Them.” Arizona Capitol Times [Phoenix, AZ] 22 Nov 2011.  [3] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/04000.html  [4] “A New Chicana/o Archive at SDSU: Unidos Por La Causa.” La Prensa San Diego [San Diego, CA] 08 Oct 2010: 8.  [5] http://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics

Dr. Christine Marin is a Professor Emeritus of Arizona State University where she led the Chicano/a Research Collection in the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the Hayden Library.

What is Mujeres Talk?

Post by Theresa Delgadillo, member of the Mujeres Talk editorial group

Mujeres Talk is an online, interdisciplinary, edited and moderated forum for the circulation and discussion of original research, commentary and creative work in brief and diverse formats such as blog essays (500-1500 words), multimedia presentations and short video. We focus on Chicana, Latina, and Native American women’s work, however, we continue to welcome work from allies, and diverse racial and ethnic authors within and outside of these categories. All posts represent the views of individual authors. All submissions are reviewed by two members of the Editorial Group to ensure that they are appropriate for publication in this venue, offer an original and interesting perspective, cite relevant research where necessary and meet our length requirements.

Mujeres Talk also publishes simultaneous cross-posts with peer sites provided the essay, multimedia or creative work appears on both sites on the same day and both sites agree to note simultaneous publication.

Mujeres Talk publishes on a weekly basis on Tuesdays. Online since January 2011, we took a hiatus in Autumn 2013 and resumed publication in January 2014. See our “Archive” for past posts.

Mujeres Talk publishes work on a wide range of topics of interest to academics, community members, and the general public. 

Mujeres Talk is governed collaboratively by an all-volunteer Editorial Group. Members include Inés Hernandez-Avila, Theresa Delgadillo, Lucila Ek, Miranda Martinez, Diana Rivera, Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, Seline Szkupinski Quiroga. Please see the “Editors” page for information on our Editorial Group. 

Mujeres Talk solicits submissions and accepts unsolicited submissions. See our “How To Submit” page for further information.

Mujeres Talk believes in providing a space for ideas, research and creativity that may not have a home in print and other publications. We also want to direct readers to important and interesting print publications. Our hope is that we will publish timely reflections, critiques or excerpts of research in progress to foster dialogue among women of color and our allies.

Mujeres Talk believes in the active role that community plays in the production and reception of ideas and we encourage our readers to submit responses to published pieces. Our Editorial Group moderates comments on the site to avoid flaming and spamming. Please act with respect and consideration for each other in blog discussions. All comments are archived with essays to ensure future access by readers, writers, activists and scholars.

Mujeres Talk subscribes to the following Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs or CC BY-NC-ND. Readers and users may download and share content from this site provided that they credit Mujeres Talk and authors. Readers and users may not change, alter or modify any content from our site in re-use or use content from our site for any commercial purposes.

Renewal at Mujeres Talk

September 30, 2013

We have news of departures and changes at MT to share with our readers today. We hope you will join us in thanking Sara A. Ramírez, Elena Gutiérrez and Ella Díaz for their service!

Our extremely talented Co-Editor/Moderator from 2012-2013 Sara A. Ramírez is stepping down from this role. A graduate student in Ethnic Studies at UC-Berkeley, Sara will be devoting her time and energy this academic year to work on her dissertation, which promises to be a smart, ambitious, and innovative contribution to Ethnic and Gender Studies. While we will all dearly miss working with Sara, we are excited for her that she has reached this stage in her work and wish her wonderful and inspired writing days ahead. If we were thinking only of ourselves, we might be tempted to say that her departure is not good news, but knowing how long and hard Sara has worked to make it to dissertation stage we share her joy in taking this next step. We hope she knows that she can continue to rely on all of us for support in her journey.

Since joining the Mujeres Talk Editorial Collective last year, Sara A. Ramírez has been a phenomenal contributor and collaborator. As both a lead editor and a second reader, she has corresponded with authors and solicited and/or reviewed no less than eight essays during this past year. Her commitment, dedication and collaborative skills impressed us all as exceptional, especially for a young scholar. We know that these will serve her well in her future career in academia. Sara always brought new ideas to our editorial discussions and successfully followed through on them. She was responsible and forthright in consulting with colleagues on the Collective when thorny issues surfaced. She deftly managed to incorporate varied feedback into editing suggestions to authors. Sara is a terrific editor, both careful and caring in her comments to authors. Most importantly, in her every action Sara conveyed her strong feminist ethics to build, contribute, and deepen opportunities for Chicana, Latina, and Native American women, queer and transgender folks in the academy. For these reasons, we want to take this moment to publicly thank Sara A. Ramírez for her exceptional service to Mujeres Talk and MALCS.

A second member of our Editorial Collective is also moving on to an exciting new project. Associate Professor Elena Gutiérrez is leaving Mujeres Talk to take on leadership responsibilities on another digital project: the Reproductive Justice Virtual Library. On the Mujeres Talk Editorial Collective, Elena reviewed submissions, contributed to discussions about our editorial guidelines, solicited essays for the site, and wrote an excellent essay for Mujeres Talk on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade earlier this year. Elena will be curating the Reproductive Justice Virtual Library site with movement activists and scholars across the nation. We have no doubt that Elena’s many talents in editing and writing will make RJVL a great site. We are excited about this new site, which expands the digital and online presence of women of color even further, so we wish Elena Gutiérrez every success in this exciting new endeavor!

Ella Díaz, who has contributed several excellent essays to Mujeres Talk on adjunct faculty, Latina art, sexuality and politics, mentoring, and the importance of digital publication for women of color, and who has also been a careful, generous, and keen reviewer of submissions to Mujeres Talk, will return to her earlier role as an occasional contributor to Mujeres Talk rather than a regular member of the Editorial Collective. Readers may remember that Ella joined the Collective earlier this year and contributed to the further development of editorial policy guidelines for this unique format. Ella’s enthusiasm and energy as well as her expertise in art and performance and excellent collaborative and critical skills will continue to make a valuable contribution to Mujeres Talk in this more limited role. We also wish her every success in her continued role on the MALCS Coordinating Committee and in her academic career — students at Cornell are lucky to have Ella as a professor!

Finally, we’d like to announce that Mujeres Talk will become an independent website as of October 2013! Look for an announcement of our new site soon! We plan to be up and running later this month and will be returning to our previous biweekly publication on Mondays. We developed Mujeres Talk as a project within MALCS to serve the mission and goals of the organization in an online format. In any growth process there are transitions and transformations. We have determined that continuing to grow and evolve Mujeres Talk and its capabilities will be best accomplished as a site independent of MALCS. We support the principles and goals of MALCS as we continue to build space for Chicanas, Latinas, and Native American women in the academy. We have put forward a proposal for preserving a digital archive of our site from its inception in January 2011 through today, September 2013, to the MALCS national leadership. We hope that our regular readers will continue to contribute to and follow the site. We are excited to embark on this new journey with you and your support!

Theresa Delgadillo
Inés Hernandez-Avila
Felicity Amaya Schaeffer
Elena Gutiérrez
Lucila Ek
Lourdes Alberto
Ella Díaz

Comment(s):

  1. Anonymous    October 8, 2013 at 7:17 PM

    Dr. Diaz’ article both impressed me and saddened me, as I remember well my first three years as Lecturer(hired in a tenure-track position), 5 years as Assistant Prof, 21 years as a Lecturer(with employment security). People gave me much advice, but I could not lfollow it. I had a destiny to fulfill. Me and a large number of other people, faculty, staff, and students,working in UC System set out to transform it. Were we demented? Did we make a difference? I have no answers, but would do it all over again if I could. In the academic world, everything is negotiable. ASR

  2. Sara A. Ramírez    October 11, 2013 at 1:57 PM

    Thank you to the MT Collective for being such fantastic mujeres with whom to work. My experience with MT–especially under the guidance of Theresa Delgadillo and Seline Szkupinski Quiroga–has helped me to understand the complexities of feminist editorial work. Many thanks for this wonderful opportunity.

  3. Theresa Delgadillo, Co-Editor/Moderator    October 12, 2013 at 11:54 AM

    Many thanks to the many who have emailed us personally to express your continued support for Mujeres Talk as an independent site — we’re looking forward to continuing to hear from and work with all!

The Deconstruction/Reconstruction of the Community and Institution Collaborative Model

February 18, 2013

'Archives' by Marino Gonzalez. Flickr/Creative Commons License.

‘Archives’ by Marino Gonzalez. Flickr/Creative Commons License.

By Linda Garcia Merchant

(Crossposted from Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory with permission of author)

These Digital History projects define how existing collecting methods have been tested, challenged and reconstructed to achieve their successful outcomes. Each project takes the basic idea of creating an online resource on knowledge that historically hasn’t been available to interested audiences.

 The community collaborative projects are based on these general ideas.

• A model based on acquisition, preservation and distribution of an existing cultural history parallel to, but not included in the American narrative.

• An anecdotal history through interviews and a history based on material acquisitions in danger of being lost without this effort to acquire and preserve it.

• A history presented in visualizations that organize large amounts of data into a manageable visitor experience. Content that has a goal of informing a range of visitors, engaging a community eager for this history and encouraging future scholarship.

Featured Practitioners:

1. Thuy Vo DangVietnamese American Oral History Project
 (Email:  thuy.vodang@uci.edu)

2. Janet WeaverIowa Women’s Archives, Mujeres Latinas Project
 (Email:  janet-weaver@uiowa.edu

)

3.  Samip MalickSouth Asian American Digital Archive (
Email:  samip@saadigitalarchive.org



)

1. Origins: How did you come up with the original idea for the project? Did the idea come as a response to a community request? Did you approach the community as a result of your research? Did personal experience play a role in your project choice?

Thuy Vo Dang (Vietnamese American Oral History Project)
The Vietnamese American Oral History Project assembles, preserves, and disseminates the life stories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. The idea for the Vietnamese American Oral History Project (VAOHP) came after many years of conversation between academics and community leaders who wanted to see some efforts made to assemble and preserve the stories of Vietnamese Americans. Since the Vietnam-American War ended in 1975, the population of Vietnamese Americans has dramatically increased and the majority of Vietnamese Americans are concentrated in Southern California. With a population of about half a million here, we’ve seen scattered efforts to conduct oral histories, but without institutional backing. I wasn’t until UC Irvine’s School of Humanities received a generous grant from a donor (who wishes to remain anonymous) that we were able to begin this project in the Fall of 2011. I was hired to be the project director and in my first few months on the job that looked at existing models of oral history projects from the Jewish, Japanese, and Chinese American communities (to name a few). Besides connecting with other projects, we also outreached to the Vietnamese language media. In the first year of the project, VAOHP was covered by all 3 Vietnamese-language daily newspapers in Orange County and a handful of radio and television outlets.

I have experience with interview methodology, from my ethnographic field work in San Diego. I am also fully fluent in speaking, reading, and writing Vietnamese, which was a preferred qualification for this position.



Janet Weaver (The Iowa Women’s Archive Mujeres Latinas Project)


The original idea of the Mujeres Latinas Project grew out of the priority of the Louise Noun – Mary Louise Smith Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA), an archival repository located in the Main Library of the University of Iowa Libraries. The Archives was created to preserve the papers of Iowa women from all walks of life.

IWA staff started the Mujeres Latinas Project in 2005. Its impetus lay in our realization that at that time no archival repositories within Iowa were actively seeking to preserve the history of Iowa Latinas, whose contributions remained hidden in Iowa history. We originally conceived the project simply as an oral history collection. Between 2005 and 2007 three part-time oral history interviewers Georgina Buendía-Cruz, Teresa García, and Iskar Nuñez were hired to conduct interviews in different parts of the state.  During the same period, additional interviews recorded by IWA staff members Janet Weaver, Kären Mason, and UI reference librarian Rachel Garza Carreón.  During this period over 100 interviews were recorded, the majority of them in four areas of the state along the Mississippi River, and in Mason City in northern Iowa. Since the start, participants in the project have donated a variety of documents to the Archives and the collection has expanded beyond individuals’ papers to include records from organizations important to Latina/o history.  The individual and family papers are preserved under the individual or family name in about twenty collections. Among the organizational records now preserved in IWA are the records of the Davenport League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC Council 10, the records of the Muscatine Migrant Committee and the records of Iowa state LULAC.

Samip Malick (South Asian American Digital Archive)
We started SAADA because of a critical need not being addressed by other existing archival repositories. Very few materials relating to South Asian Americans are currently included in any other physical repositories. For the vast majority of archives, materials relating to this community fall outside the scope of their collection development policies. The archival materials that do exist are spread widely across collections around the country, making it difficult even for individual researchers to access the materials they need for their work and especially difficult for members of the community to consult them.

SAADA’s digital-only approach to archives presents a major re-conceptualization of traditional archival functions. This innovative, dispersed approach to archives reinterprets the post-custodial model for the digital era. Original archival documents remain with the communities, institutions or individuals from which they originate, while digital access copies are made available for use online.

Like many first and second generation South Asian Americans, I grew up completely unaware of the long and diverse history of South Asians in the United States. I was surprised to learn that Dalip Singh Saund, the first person of South Asian American heritage (and also Asian American heritage), was elected to serve in Congress in 1956. Or that in 1923 the Supreme Court ruled that South Asians should not be allowed to become American citizens, a policy that lasted for the next twenty-five years. Or how in 1913 South Asian immigrants on the Pacific Coast founded the Ghadar Party to fight for India’s independence from the British. These are the very kinds of stories that SAADA helps to preserve and make better known.

Since 2010, we have collected and provided access to over 1,000 discrete archival objects, each of which helps to uncover overlooked narratives from South Asian American history. Through outreach, public events, community forums, presentations in classrooms, reference interactions, and the use of blogs, traditional and social media, SAADA also works to create greater awareness about these histories. Materials from the archive have been included in documentary films, books and journal articles. In 2012, the SAADA website received over 73,000 visits.

2.  Structure: Describe the support structure for this project. How was the support developed? Support from your institution (financial, staffing, network space), did this have challenges, if so, what kind, if not, why not? (If you would rather not speak to the challenges, that’s fine, but please do speak to the process).

Thuy Vo Dang (Vietnamese American Oral History Project)


The VAOHP is housed in the Department of Asian American Studies at UC Irvine, thus the department has provided support in terms of an advisory committee, a faculty mentor, and administrative staff that help with tracking the donor budget, equipment, and hiring work study interns to help with transcribing and other related work. I teach a course for the department called “Vietnamese American Experience” once per academic year where I teach students historical-social context and train them in oral history methodology. From this class, we generate one fully-processed oral history per student. I recruit from this class for an independent study/research program for VAOHP where students can continue to conduct oral history interviews or work on community outreach, social media, and website maintenance. Additionally, Professor Linda Vo, gives her Research Methods class the option to work with me on an oral history project and receive course credit through her course. These are all ways we generate interviews and train students in the process. I conduct interviews as well–between 5 to 10 oral histories per month.

We also partner with the Southeast Asian Archive at UC Irvine, which provides us with network/server space through the libraries’ UCI-Space. The libraries staff worked on the design and general maintenance of the digital repository. We will house the entire VAOHP Collection (hard copy and digital records) in the Southeast Asian Archive.

Finally, I have reached out to community organizations that have conducted oral histories, such as the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation’s 500 Oral Histories Project to acquire their Southern California interviews so we can process these–transcribe, translate, and digitize them for online dissemination. The VAHF owns the copyright to their interviews and out of their 500, they have given us approximately 100 interviews.

Some challenges that have arisen are mainly budget-related. We are working with a very small budget and thus have to utilize volunteers and students to get the interviews processed. The UCI Libraries has kicked in tremendous support in terms of network space, but we anticipate needing to provide them with some support to sustain the website and make the interviews available to the public. The restrictions have affected us in our choice of media, as we only audio-recorded at this point. The cost of video is prohibitive for the libraries.



Janet Weaver (The Iowa Women’s Archive Mujeres Latinas Project)
We were able to begin the project with small grants from the State Historical Society of Iowa’s Resource Enhancement and Protection-Historical Resource Development Program and the State Historical Society, Inc. As the project grew we secured additional funding from the University of Iowa Libraries and from the University of Iowa’s Year of Public Engagement and Year of the Arts and Humanities.

The IWA’s Mujeres Latinas Project is able to call on resources from the UI Libraries, including access to technology support, state-of-the-art conservation and preservation facilities, and the Iowa Digital Library.  The permanent two-person, full-time staff of the Iowa Women’s Archives continues to maintain the Mujeres Latinas Project as part of its ongoing commitment to preserve the papers of Iowa women and their families.  The IWA website is an essential component of making its collections visible and the UI Libraries supports the maintenance of our website and provides server space for digitized materials.

Samip Malick (South Asian American Digital Archive)
SAADA is an independent non-profit organization. In 2008, the founding board members each chipped in a couple hundred dollars to purchase server space for our first website and submit the necessary paperwork to register the organization. From its inception until mid-2012, SAADA existed as an entirely volunteer run effort. However, in an effort to ensure that the organization is well situated to care for and curate the archive, we have begun to work towards building the organization and ensuring its financial sustainability.

In 2011, we applied for and received our organization’s first grant funding and also conducted our first annual fundraising campaign. In 2012, we expanded our fundraising efforts and began working towards hiring our first staff member. In July 2012, I left my position as the Director of the Ranganathan Center for Digital Information at the University of Chicago Library to begin volunteering with SAADA full time. Our fundraising efforts in 2012 went well and I am now SAADA’s first full time paid staff member.

SAADA is a start-up non-profit organization, and we face the same challenges as many other non-profit organizations. One of the primary challenges, of course, is that of fundraising. However, we are fortunate to have a Board of Directors that fully supports the organization’s growth and a volunteer Development Director with expertise in fund development who has helped us approach our fundraising efforts more strategically. I believe that we have the right elements in place to build a financially sustainable organization.

3. Sustainability:  How long has the project been online? What has the feedback been from the community on usability?  From the institution? Has any of the feedback been incorporated into adjustments or additions to the site, the collection or the process of acquisition? How has the collection/acquisition/curation process changed from the beginning to now? When did the development of site infrastructure enter into the process? If you would like to share, what are plans for the future? How have you addressed issues like ‘scope creep’?

Thuy Vo Dang (Vietnamese American Oral History Project)
We had a “soft launch” of the website in April 2012, just 5 months after getting UCI’s IRB approval for research. Then in October 2012 we had a formal website launch when we hosted a community reception in Little Saigon (Orange County, California) to demo the website. The event attracted over 250 people, from the community mainly. We had a great amount of media coverage, including an Associate Press story in the days after the reception.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from the community so far. We have yet to receive any constructive criticism about the actual website, only requests for expand the project beyond Southern California and to incorporate video interviews.



Janet Weaver (The Iowa Women’s Archive Mujeres Latinas Project)


The Mujeres Latinas collections in the IWA have been included in its website since the project’s inception in 2005.  Collection guides for papers of Iowa Latinas, their families and organizations are added to our website as they become available.  A search for Latinas and their Families currently yields a list of collections with links to their finding aids. Additional collections of varying sizes wait in the wings to be processed and added to the website.

All IWA collection guides are described through the UI Libraries Archon database that allows for detailed description of collections and enhanced searching.  In addition to collection guides, a sampling of documents and photographs are scanned with consent of donors and made available to the public through the Iowa Digital Library.

We are in the process of updating the Mujeres Latinas page of the IWA site to enhance visibility of the Latina collections and provide detailed information about the interviews and related documents.

Our plans for the future include creating a digital version of the 2012 Pathways to Iowa: Migration Stories from the Iowa Women’s Archives and an expansion of the project to offer offsite digitization in the homes of donors and to expand the scope of the project to encompass central Iowa. Through the UI Libraries digital department we are able to guarantee that the digital materials preserved in our repository will continue to be accessible in a future that brings new technologies that cannot be anticipated by today’s archivists and technology specialists. In this way IWA can promise those who entrust their family papers to us that no matter what the digital world of tomorrow holds, their papers will continue to be accessible.

Samip Malick (South Asian American Digital Archive)
We put a website online in 2008 with some basic information about the organization. But it was not until 2010, when we began collecting materials in earnest, that we built the website with its current structure and using our current content management system (Drupal 6). The website has undergone some aesthetic changes and added new features over time (such as the visual browsing, map browsing), but the interface and structure of the site have remained relatively consistent. We are just now beginning a process of refreshing our visual identity, branding and updating our website to Drupal 7.

The feedback from the community about our website has been overwhelmingly positive. We have not done any systematic usability testing or user surveys, though this is something that we hope to do in the coming months. However, based on anecdotal feedback, users have found the website easy to use and navigate. We have added some features to the website based on user feedback, such as the visual browsing and map browsing. Other feature requests are on the back burner, but will be implemented at a later date, such as a request to be able to download PDF versions of public domain materials.

SAADA is guided by a collection policy that was approved by the Board of Directors at the organization’s inception. However, given the breadth of the materials included in the collection policy, this year the Board of Directors has outlined three collecting priorities for 2013, which fall within the scope of the collection policy, but specify areas that we would like the archive to grow in the coming year. These priorities will be assessed again in 2014.

Feedback from the community through both informal and formal channels has been important in helping determining the priorities for collecting. For example, many community members have indicated the importance of documenting the South Asian American community post-9/11 and consequently, that is one of the collection priorities for 2013.

4. Building community: Projects like this can create generational and transformational experiences with students, staff and community that create related points of cultural, social, and historical awareness. These types of projects build new communities both virtual and real. What has been the multi-generational experience for your research group? For the community?  What has the larger global community’s response been?

Thuy Vo Dang (Vietnamese American Oral History Project)
This project has been a tremendously successful vehicle for forging stronger relationships between the university (mainly the Southeast Asian Archive) and the community and between the different generations in the community. One vehicle that was truly effective was a weekly radio show on Vietnam California Radio (FM 106.3) that I co-hosted bilingually. The show was called “Oral History: Stories between the generations” and the goal was to make the stories we collected even more accessible to the community. The show also served as a recruitment tool to get a wider sampling of narrators to share their life stories with the project. I had students come on air to talk about what they learned in interviewing their parents or those of the first generation. I had narrator clips air thematically to showcase different types of experiences such as family life, migration, and education. This show has reached a really diverse audience in the Vietnamese American community and it proved to be a great media tool, since we were able to publicize our community reception through that show.

Aside from the radio show, the website where all the oral histories are presented has been used by a high school class as part of its curriculum. I invited that high school class to come for a tour of the Southeast Asian Archive and when they were able to get funding for a bus, they came to UCI for the tour. In addition to the Archive tour, I worked with an organization on campus called Southeast Asian Student Association to put together a college panel for the high school class. All these “extramural” activities are really crucial in helping to strengthen the relationships between the VAOHP, Southeast Asian Archive, and the local communities we serve which is multi-generational and quite diverse.

Another example of an inter-generational collaborative initiative through the VAOHP is a student-lead summer research project at a senior apartment in Orange County. My students came into the senior apartments and presented on the VAOHP at an opening social mixer and then recruited narrators to interview from that facility. After 2 quarters, they collected 8 interviews and shared their “findings” at a closing social mixer. The product of this initiative will be a bounded copy of life stories for the senior apartments’ library, individual CDs for the narrators, and a presentation on campus in Spring 2013. This initiative pushed students outside the university and allowed for an engagement between seniors and students.

Janet Weaver (The Iowa Women’s Archive Mujeres Latinas Project)
The digital world represents a critical point of access for younger generations through which ties with older generations and community can be strengthened.  By providing ready access to information in undergraduate and graduate classes, students develop an understanding of the contributions of Latino families to Iowa history and recognize familiar sites and stories from their own family histories.  They encounter primary source materials in their own time and through technologies with which they are familiar. We encourage them to visit the Archives and look at the physical collections in our reading room. IWA is also able to take reference questions by phone and email through our online reference account.  Visitors to the IWA – whether in its physical or virtual space –  develop an appreciation for the interconnectedness of family and community networks and the place of Iowa Latinas within a larger context of regional, national, and transnational history.

The connectedness of our IWA staff to communities with which they engage is strengthened by the process of reaching out, conducting interviews, collecting documents and building trust.  In the community of Davenport, Iowa, the League of United Latin American Citizens – LULAC Council 10 – after reconnecting with its significant history of civil rights activism, now boasts the largest membership of any council in LULAC’s Midwest region.  And the Council continues to work for educational opportunity, preserving traditions such as fiestas, its scholarship program, and reunions of residents of the community’s early-day Mexican barrios. These events provide an opportunity to connect younger members with a Latino past that stretches back over a hundred years. This year the Council has asked the IWA to charter a bus to bring community members, families, and individuals who have donated materials to the Mujeres Latinas Project for a day-trip to visit their papers, see how they have been preserved, and remember Iowa’s Latina/o past.  Iowa LULAC’s recent leadership in the struggle for voter rights in Iowa has garnered Iowa state LULAC this year’s Louise Noun Award from the ACLU of Iowa.  A former president of the ACLU of Iowa, Louise Noun was also the co-founder of the Iowa Women’s Archives.

Samip Malick (South Asian American Digital Archive)
We have used social media and other online forums extensively to create an online community around SAADA’s archive. We have more than 1,300 followers on Facebook, 250 on Twitter, and nearly 600 subscribers to our email list. We post items from the archive, news about the organization, relevant articles and links to other archives that will interest our online community. In response, the SAADA’s social media community has remained active and engaged with our posts. Our most popular post on Facebook last year (a photo of students at the Women’s Medical College, Philadelphia PA from the 1920s) received 58 likes and 42 shares.

Additionally, we have tried to find ways to make the materials from the archive relevant to our users by connecting historical items with current news and events. For example, after the tragic shooting at the Sikh Gurdwara in Wisconsin, we posted materials from SAADA with more information about Sikhism and that demonstrate the long history of Sikhism in the United States. We also put out a call requesting submissions of photographs and other materials documenting the community’s response to the shooting. We received photographs of vigils, official proclamations of mourning and flyers for community events. These materials were added to the archive.

As another example, before the 2012 presidential election, we posted an article from 1923 describing the U.S. Supreme Court decision to ban South Asians from becoming American citizens. This article was shared by many of our subscribers with added comments encouraging others in the community to vote. This item was liked 340 times on Facebook and shared 21 on Twitter.

In addition to our online presence, we have organized ‘community forums’ as a venue for community members to learn more about archives, see materials from SAADA’s archive and offer feedback and suggestions for our organization. We organized 2 forums in 2012 that were open to the general public (one in Chicago, one in Cleveland) and 1 forum specifically targeted to contemporary South Asian American artists in Chicago. We plan to have more such events this year. We have also presented in classrooms and at workshops and conferences. Altogether, we did over 20 public presentations in 2012 all over the country.

5. All things analog: Each of your projects engages in related creative products (art installations, performance events, print culture). How has this ancillary production influenced the project? What has been the most interesting or inspiring moment, material discovery, or interview experience in the work so far?

Thuy Vo Dang (Vietnamese American Oral History Project)
For the website launch/community reception in October 2012, we partnered with a local artist who was also a narrator for the VAOHP. Her artwork layers family and community history into visual pieces, so we wanted to have her art exhibited on one wall. On another wall we presented the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation’s 500 Oral Histories Project and on the third wall we had the UC Irvine libraries laptop stations with volunteers to help community members navigate the website. This multi-pronged approach to presenting oral history shows the aesthetic/creative possibilities that life stories can initiate, features the collaboration between grassroots efforts to preserve community history, and brings technology directly to the community.  

This community reception really cemented the notion that oral history can be exhibited, discussed, and used in a variety of ways that make it accessible to all.



Janet Weaver (The Iowa Women’s Archive Mujeres Latinas Project)
One of the best moments of discovery occurred when our staff along with staff from the conservation department of the UI Library visited the LULAC center in Davenport to assist with refurbishing an exhibit in the LULAC center. One of the elders from the council suggested exploring the attic space above the old portion of the building where he believed a box of records of the council’s activities during the 1960s had been stored.  When the younger members of the council brought down the box – it did indeed contain precious documents that told of the council’s leadership in the grape boycott campaign, flyers supporting the passage of Iowa’s first migrant child labor legislation, and handwritten meeting minutes of the Quad City Grape Boycott Campaign. This was a signal and exciting moment and highlighted the active role that historical archives can play in enriching community life for people too often overlooked in the historical narrative.

The Mujeres Latinas collections in the IWA provide primary source material for scholars and researchers from all backgrounds – junior high school students participating in National History Day competitions, undergraduate students from across the state conducting course research assignments, independent scholars and interested members of the public and institutions.  We conceptualized our recent exhibition Pathways to Iowa: Migration Stories from the Iowa Women’s Archives to showcase our Mujeres collections and celebrate IWA’s twentieth anniversary.  We are currently reconceiving this exhibition as an interactive digital exhibit for the IWA website.

IWA’s Mujeres Latinas collections helped provide an impetus to the decision of three UI faculty members to organize and host a symposium in 2012 on The Latino Midwest, which was held at the University of Iowa. The symposium in turn provided inspiration for a February 2013 Iowa Alumni Magazine article, “The Invisible Iowans,” which drew on many of the collections featured in the Pathways to Iowa exhibition. Among the photographs it included was an especially moving and significant one of Florence Terronez with her daughter and granddaughter visiting the IWA exhibit, which featured her mother’s migration story.

Samip Malick (South Asian American Digital Archive)


For me, the most rewarding moments have been in working with community members who have materials saved in their basements or attics and who, for the first time, are given an opportunity to share these materials with the world.

One such example is our work with S.P. Singh, whose grandfather, Bhagwan Singh Gyanee, arrived in the United States in 1914. Gyanee was born in India in 1884 and from an early age became involved in the anti-colonial freedom struggle. In 1909, as the British began strongly suppressing the freedom movement, Gyanee began to feel that his and his family’s lives were in danger. He decided to flee India, leaving his wife and three young children behind and for nearly the next 50 years he lived in exile, traveling to Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Burma, Panama, Canada and finally arriving in the United States in 1914. Here, he became a leader of the Ghadar Party, an organization based in San Francisco agitating for India’s independence from Britain. In 1917, Gyanee and his compatriots were arrested and imprisoned for amassing weapons, which they hoped to use to fight the British in armed combat. After his release from prison, Gyanee became a philosophical and spiritual leader and delivered lectures across the United States. Finally, in 1958, after nearly 50 years away from India, he was allowed to return. He spent his last years living in a small town near where he was born.

After his passing, his grandson, S.P. Singh inherited all of his grandfather’s materials. When Mr. Singh moved to the United States in the early 1970s and settled in Atlanta, he brought these materials along with him. His grandfather’s materials were important to him, and he thought they would be important to others as well.

I came across this story in a short article Mr. Singh had written about his grandfather that was published online. At the end of the article, Mr. Singh had included his email address.  I emailed him to ask if he might consider working with SAADA and allowing us to digitize any materials he had in his possession. Mr. Singh was visiting India when he received my email, but he called me right away. He was so thrilled that an opportunity had finally presented itself to have his grandfather’s story heard by the world.

In April 2012 I flew to Atlanta, and along with a volunteer, sat in Mr. Singh’s house for three straight days as we digitized all of his grandfather’s materials. Mr. Singh would regale us with stories he had been told by his grandfather as we looked through page after page of correspondence, community publications, photographs and diaries. This incredible collection is now digital preserved and available online through the SAADA website. It has been featured in the New York Times and I have shared this incredible story at many of our community events.

For me, this experience embodies the possibilities of SAADA’s approach to building a community-based digital archive.

Linda Garcia Merchant is an independent documentary filmmaker and the Technical Director of the Chicana Por Mi Raza Digital Humanities Project. linda@vocesprimeras.com

Comment(s):

Anonymous    March 23, 2013 at 5:51 PM

I applaud you for your efforts!
I believe it is very important to preserve a community’s history so that future generations can study the changes that communities undergo. The interviews that were conducted are and will be extremely rewarding. They will provide researchers with a better understanding of the personal circumstances that members of that community faced. I am glad to see that you have received support from different organizations and your communities. I agree that projects like this create cultural, social, and historical awareness and I hope in the future to have the opportunity to perform research in my community. Thank you.

Alejandra Cervantes
Latina/o Studies 2322; The Ohio State University