Important note on course format: The first two weeks of course lectures will be in-person. Beginning week three, I will post an asynchronous lecture on Mondays, but Wednesday lectures will still be in-person.
Course Description:
This course is an introduction to the history, culture, and identity of Chicanas/os. The purpose is to familiarize students with the diversity and complexity of the Chicana/o experience and to introduce some basic issues central to that experience. The course also begins to introduce the history of U.S. Central Americans. Starting with the initial contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples as part of the Spanish conquest, we will examine the historical formation of Chicana/o identity through the ongoing cultural process of mestizaje. Subsequently, we’ll explore the changing configurations and diverse expressions of Chicana/o identity across space and time. Because this is a humanities-based course, the emphasis of readings and lectures is upon culture and its relation to the historic development of legal, political, economic, and sexual inequalities.
In addition to the required texts, other readings are available online, for free. Some require access through a UCLA proxy server.
Your T.A. will hold weekly office hours. Check with them for exact times.
The Take-Home Final:
This is not a research paper, but an in-depth, well-written response to two questions that
ask you to analyze the readings and issues brought up in lecture throughout the term. Final exam prompt will be made available on Wednesday of 10th week.
Week One: Introduction and Chicana/o/x/e Identity
October 2 (in-person) Introduction: Who is a Chicana/o?; syllabus review
October 4 (in-person) What is Chicana/o Identity? Introduction to Social Identity Theory
Readings:
“Social identities—A framework for studying the adaptations of immigrants and ethnics: The adaptations of Mexicans in the United State.” A. Hurtado, P. Gurin, T. Peng
Social Problems journal (1994)
Available on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=hurtado+gurin+social+identities&oq=hurta
“I Am Joaquin” poem: https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/latinos/joaquin.htm
Week Two: Chicana/o Identity in Film and The Spanish Conquest
October 9 (in-person) Chicano social identity
Film: “Mi Familia”
October 11 (in-person) The Spanish Conquest and the Sistema de Castas
Readings:
Noriega, The Chicano Studies Reader: “Refiguring Aztlán.” Rafael Pérez-Torres
Patricia Seed. “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753.”
Google Scholar: https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/62/4/569/149083/Social-Dimensions-of-Race-Mexico-City-1753
Week Three: The U.S.-Mexico War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo; The Great Migration and Mexican Segregation
Reminder: Beginning week three, Monday lectures will be asynchronous but Wednesdays will still be in-person.
October 16 (asynchronous) The Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo
October 18 (in-person) The Great Migration and Mexican Segregation
Readings:
“Manifest Destiny: The Mexican American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.” Richard Griswold del Castillo.
Google Scholar: https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/sjlta5&div=10&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals
Robert Chao Romero, CSRC Research Note on Doss v. Bernal, www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/reports/documents/RR14.pdf
Richard Valencia. “The Mexican American Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity in Mendez v. Westminster: Helping to Pave the Way for Brown v. Board of Education.”
http://www.school-diversity.org/pdf/Valencia_The_Mexican_American_Struggle.pdf
Week Four: The Chicano Movement
October 23 (asynchronous) César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers
October 25 (in-person) The East L.A. Blowouts; the National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference of 1969
Readings:
“Dolores Huerta: Woman, Organizer, and Symbol.” Richard A. Garcia. California History. Google Scholar: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25177326?searchText=&searchUri=&ab_segments=&searchKey=&refreqid=fastly-default%3A5eb9ace054ac4f0eb3cf23d8e3203d7d
Chicano Studies Reader: “The Folklore of the Freeway: Space, Culture, and Identity in Postwar Los Angeles.” Eric Avila
Week Five: The Brown Church: Religion and Chicano Identity
October 30 (asynchronous)
November 1 (in-person)
Quiz
Readings:
Romero, Hidalgo, Flores. “Rethinking the Role of Religion in Chicanx/Latinx Studies.”
Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 2022, pp. 131-144(14). Available through UCLA Library Catalog.
Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity. Chapters 1, 8. Available through UCLA Library Catalog.
Week Six: The Chicana Movement.
November 6 (asynchronous online) Chicana Insurgencies: Anna NietoGomez and the Hijas de Cuahtémoc
November 8 (in-person). Midterm prompt distributed via Canvas.
Readings:
Blackwell, Chicana Power, chapters 1,2,3,5 (available as Inclusive Reader)
Week Seven: The Chicana Movement
November 13 Chicana Feminisms: Liberal Feminism, Insurgent Feminism, and Cultural Nationalist Feminism. Midterms due.
November 15 Sexuality
Readings:
Chicano Studies Reader, Segura and Pesquera, “Beyond Indifference and Antipathy: The Chicana Movement and Chicana Feminist Discourse.”
“That’s My Place!”: Negotiating Racial, Sexual, and Gender Politics in San Francisco’s Gay Latino Alliance, 1975-1983
Horacio N. Roque Ramírez
Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 12, No. 2, Special Issue: Sexuality and Politics since 1945 (Apr., 2003), pp. 224-258
Available on Google Scholar: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3704613
Pérez, Emma. “Queering the borderlands: The challenges of excavating the invisible and unheard.” Frontiers: a journal of women studies 24, no. 2/3 (2003): 122-131.
Week Eight: Asians and Chicano/Latino Identity
November 20 The Chinese in Mexico
November 22 The Chinese in Mexico (continued)
Thanksgiving Holiday, November 23-24
Readings:
Chicano Studies Reader. Romero, Robert. ” El destierro de los Chinos”: Popular Perspectives on Chinese-Mexican Intermarriage in the Early Twentieth Century.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32.1 (2007): 113-144.
Romero, Robert Chao. “Transnational Chinese immigrant smuggling to the United States via Mexico and Cuba, 1882–1916.” Amerasia Journal 30.3 (2004): 1-16. Available on Google Scholar: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.17953/amer.30.3.n1q6007153246778
Week Nine: U.S. Central Americans
November 27 Generational Oral Histories
November 29 Diversity and Memory
Readings:
Karina Alvarado, U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance. Introduction; chapters 1, 4, 5, 8
Week Ten: Immigration
December 4 Immigration
December 6 Conclusion
Readings:
Chicano Studies Reader. Adelaida R. Del Castillo. “Illegal Status and Social Citizenship: Thoughts on Mexican Immigrants in a Postnational World.”
“Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants.”
Cecilia Menjívar and Leisy Abrego. Available on Google Scholar: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/663575
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