MALCS Archive

(MALCS) Women Active in Letters and Social Change

MALCS Day Two by Ester Trujillo

The second day of MALCS got started off bright and early as the cool sea breeze rolled onto campus. At 9:00 I walked over to make sure all the panels were set and ready to go with their individual technology requests and I ran into none other than Ana Nieto Gomez! I had one of those moments when you become star struck by experiencing your first encounter with a scholar you have read and heard stories of. Just a few hours before I was in my apartment talking with conference attendee Liliana Trujillo and conference presenter Gloria Negrete about Maylei Blackwell’s book Chicana Power! and about the struggles our scholarly fore-madres have faced in reflection of yesterday’s Plenary on Institutional Violence. You can only imagine my surprise to see Ana in front of me when I had not even had a chance to get my coffee!

During the second plenary, there were approximately 97 people in attendance.Rusty and Elisa Plenary II was titled “Technologies of Visibility: The practice of Diálogo, Testimonio y Performance” During the session, attorney Arcelia Hurtado presented a video displaying the testimonio of a young boy whose dads are gay and explained the impact that policy has on changing the ways young people feel about themselves. Martha Gonzalez showed a video displaying the ways fandango brings women together and how teaching fandango and teaching dance and musical production brings in a new method of teaching about culture and about life.

The testimonio video Stephanie showed reminded me of many of the experiences I have had in my quest to enter higher education both at the undergraduate level and the graduate level. The way the students at UTPA coordinated the Anzaldúa exhibit was truly inspirational. The project presented by Stephanie Alvarez titled “Cosecha Voices” (which documents the migrant farm worker experience) integrates performance, testimonio, and incorporates digital storytelling and diálogo with familia and amigos. When she mentioned that 80% of the students who participate in these projects graduate there was a feeling of happiness and pride throughout the auditorium. The plenary concluded with the summary of the message the panelists have tried to convey: Acknowledging invisibility because by making it visible people have to react. They may not take action but seeing it occur has the ability to transform both those who see the change and those who participate in its making.

The concluding portion of the plenary was particularly striking as Martha, Arcelia and Stephanie had the concluding synthesis presentation in which they asked plenary attendees to recite the theory on which these projects are based upon., all together in unison and in one voice. The digital storytelling has given me a breadth of ideas for my own knowledge producing methodologies and it has provided me with ideas that I can implement in my classrooms as I teach.

In the evening, MALCS attendees gathered at Casa de la Raza in Downtown Santa Barbara where we settled into our tables and ate a delicious dinner. Tortuga Award winners Gloria Cuádraz and Raquel López were announced and although Gloria was not there, Raquel gave a moving speech about her tenure as the director of Casa de la Raza. Following the presentation of the awards a collective of women named Entre Mujeres played a set of jarocho and jarocho-inspired music and dance. After a long night of selling raffle tickets, winners were announced and Rusty Barceló won the grand prize, a New black 16GB iPad. Other winners included Elvia Niebla, Cristina Serna, and Georgina Guzman. After the winners were announced the DJ got the party started with an amazing set of music and I spotted Chela Sandoval, Edwina Barvosa, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Norma Cantú and Aida Hurtado dancing the night away.

After the amazing centerpieces were swept away by attendees and the tables were picked up by the various clean up crews and the last shuttle vans rolled out, we went home with our feet throbbing, with joy in our hearts and sisterhood in our waking and sleeping dreams.

Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, Linda Garcia-Merchant, and webjefa Susana Gallardo

Friday: Second Plenary, “Technologies of Visibility”

Arcelia Hurtado, Deputy Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, addresses the membership next to Martha Gonzalez (U Washington) and Stephanie Alvarez Martinez (UT Pan Am) at MALCS second plenary in UCSB’s Corwin Pavilion, titled “Technologies of Visibility: The Practice of Dialogo, Testimonio y Performance.” They were introduced by site chair Aida Hurtado. Table design by Ester Trujillo.

 

Rita Urquijo-Ruiz, Rusty Barcelo, Irene Mata, Karleen Pendleton and Linda Heidenreich

Linda Heidenreich, Rita Urquijo-Ruiz, Rusty Barcelo, Irene Mata, and Karleen Pendleton at the stimulating panel “Populating Queer Aztlan: Queer Bodies and (Re)Births in the work of Karleen Pendleton Jimenez and Adelina Anthony”

Summer Institute Update

By Ester Trujillo, UCSB Site committee

As the first full day of the MALCS Summer Institute, I am happy to report that everything was absolutely incredible.MALCS QR code by Seline Skzupinski Quiroga

The panels got started today at 9:00 in the morning and as Session 1 began, the excitement could be felt throughout the registration area. For the first time in a long time Santa Barbara hit the mid-80’s F in temperature, making it very apparent that the Mujeres attending the conference brought the heatwave that has hit the rest of the nation along with them from as far as Washington DC, Chicago and Texas.

Today’s morning sessions covered everything from how to use testimonio as method and how to survive the process of promotion from Assistant Professor to the next level. There was a panel on technology that serendipitously congregated in a room where the learning that occurred was truly organic and natural.

During the lunch break, the vending area received conference traffic as conference participants descended upon Storke Plaza to see the items for sale by local vendors and artists. Among jewelry and prints of artworks, books and dream catchers decorated the landscape.
After the lunch break the first Summer Institute Plenary attracted over 150 conference attendees, UCSB students, and community members. Speakers Rusty Barceló, Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, Audrey Silvestre, and Nadia Zepeda provided a sobering view into their experiences with institutional violence during their talk titled, “MALCS’ Decolonial Work: Naming and Undoing Institutional Violence, From SB 1070 to Chicano Studies. Moderator Antonia Castañeda gave an insightful introduction and reminded us of the nature of institutional violence and its relation to physical violence. This plenary highlighted MALCS’ subcommittee on institutional Violence and is the first in a series of panels designed to address this issue. The second session in this thread will take place Friday, July 20th during Session 5, which runs from 10:30 to 11:45 AM. The session is session 5I and will take place in the Santa Barbara Harbor room which is located in the basement level of the University Center.

The last session of panels ran during session 3 and I had the pleasure of moderating the panel titled “The Unmaking of Americans: Citizenship, Cultural Politics, and the Neoliberal State,” featuring Ellie Hernandez, Eliza Rodriguez y Gibson, and Veronica Martinez-Matsuda where I learned about the relationship between neoliberal state policies and the regulation/policing of minority “others” both in historical terms, through cultural production and within the design of federal and state policy.  What fascinated me the most was how each speaker came from such a different methodological background and yet the tropes and themes they discussed were all delicately interwoven in a graceful dance of language and thought.

Following the Graduate and Undergraduate Caucus meetings and dinner, conference attendees gathered at Del Pueblo Café in Old Town Goleta where dinner and drinks were enjoyed through laughter and greetings of friends, both old and new.  Jessica Lopez Lyman and I both hosted the Open Mic Night and 8 courageous poets, singers and all-around performers gathered to delight us with their words. Poets as young as sixteen delivered their words; several of the poets spoke for the first time in public, reading their writings in front of an audience. Closing up the night, Rusty Barceló delighted attendees with several of her songs.

I am extremely excited for what tomorrow will bring, knowing that many conference attendees are still on their way. The full conference day of Friday, July 20th kicks off at 9:00 AM and continues through midnight as we host the Tortuga Awards Dinner at Casa de la Raza in Santa Barbara (tickets are required for entry). More than anything, I am excited to raffle off a brand new 16GB iPad and several other goodies. Find me around campus or at the dinner to get your raffle tickets, Raffle tickets are $3 each of two for $5.

New book: Speaking from the Heart: Herstories of Chicana/ Latina, and Amerindian Women

Congrats to Rose Mary Borunda and Melissa Moreno on their new book, Speaking from the Heart: Herstories of Chicana, Latina, and Amerindian Women!

At the heart of Speaking from the Heart: Herstories of Chicana, Latina, and Amerindian Women are cultural narratives, trajectories toward decolonization offered by Chicana, Latina, and Amerindian women. The series of cultural narratives in this collection interrogate the universal history commonly taught in schools and society and focus on the cultural knowledge used to resist and negotiate the deep effects of cultural colonization in everyday life. These accounts of experiential knowledge and epistemology chronicle a sense of belonging and web of relationships which provide snapshots of a larger and more inclusive cultural narrative. We call these Herstories. The series of narratives and discussion questions in this collection are intended to facilitate the deconstruction of the master narrative and promote critical thinking.

Readers of Speaking from the Heart are invited to:

  • engage in a critical examination of what one has previously learned about the self and culture(s).
  • unveil states of submersion within a reality that has been constructed by others in power.
  • develop the capacity to understand the essence of subjectivity and the capacity to reexamine one’s positionality in the world.
  • critically reflect on their own narrative.

Contributors include Jennie Luna, Maria Mejorado, Michelle Maher, Julie Figueroa, Angie Chabram, Cindy Cruz, Rebecca Rosa, Sofia Villenas, Margarita I. Berta-Avila, Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner, and Ruth Trinidad-Galván.  This book can be of use in Mexican American, Chicana/o, Latino Studies, Ethnic Studies, Education, Women Studies, and English courses.

Rose Mary Borunda & Melissa Moreno
ISBN: 978-1-4652-0239-0

Deena J. Gonzalez promoted to Associate Provost

Prof. Deena J. Gonzalez

History Professor Deena J. Gonzalez, Chair of Chicana/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University, and most recently Director of Faculty Development, has been promoted to Associate Provost at LMU.

LMU Provost Joseph Hellige announced:

“During the last year, we have been fortunate to have Dr. Deena González serving as Director of Faculty Development.  I am pleased to tell you that this position is being expanded to consolidate more aspects of faculty life and that Dr. González has agreed to serve as Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs.  In this role, she will oversee and coordinate the faculty promotion and tenure process, the preparation of faculty contracts, the faculty sabbatical process, and Chair and Director appointments.  The Associate Provost will also continue to provide leadership and coordination for programs to support faculty development, including orientation, mentoring, recognition and awards, and work-life balance.  In these activities, Dr. González will work collaboratively with various constituencies including the faculty, Deans, and the Committee on Rank and Tenure.”

Dr. Gonzalez was named an ACE (American Council  on Education) Fellow in 2010-11; she was the first Chicana Ph.D. awardee from UC Berkeley’s history department (1985) and is a founding authority in Chicana/o history, Borderlands Studies, and U.S. women’s history. Author of the monograph, Refusing the Favor (Oxford Univ Press) as well as two major encyclopedia projects in U.S. Latino/a Studies, also with Oxford University Press, she  serves currently as series co-editor for the Chicana Matters Series, University of Texas Press, with fifteen volumes, to date, and four more forthcoming.

Understanding the Past and Shaping the Future of MALCS: the complete bylaws proposal

New from the Executive Committee

2011-12 MALCS Chair Monica Torres, writing on behalf of the Executive Committee

Mónica F. Torres
2011-2012 MALCS Chair
Posted July 2012

In 2010, the MALCS Executive Committee suspended the MALCS bylaws in order to engage in a major revision of the document. It became clear that the bylaws, last revised in 1991, were in need of updating. We spent approximately one year discussing and producing a draft. We presented that draft at the 2011 Institute where we facilitated discussions during two workshops and the business meeting. We have spent the time since engaging in more discussions and revisions based on the feedback we received at the Institute. [Read more…] about Understanding the Past and Shaping the Future of MALCS: the complete bylaws proposal