Chicana/o Studies Commons^™

Mental Health, School Climate, And The Resilience Of Lgbtqia+ Mexican/X Youth, Damon R. Carbajal

Chicana and Chicano Studies ETDs

Mental health and school climate are two critical components of youth experience and are cardinal components of creating and ensuring equitable education and spaces for youth. LGBTQIA+ Mexican/x youth are highly affected by these two entities as part of their lived realities, being multiply marginalized persons in the U.S. educational system. Thus, to best understand how these entities play into the LGBTQIA+ Mexican/x youth experience, this study utilizes a social sciences testimonio comprised of one-on-one semi-structured interviews, demographic surveys, and a focus group. Through this three-prong approach, I analyze the lived realities of LGBTQIA+ Mexican/x youth, the traumas of discrimination, …

Still Dreaming Of You: Selena's Discourse With And Continuing Impact On American Musical Culture, Hannah Lastra

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Selena Quintanilla Perez continues to circulate in popular culture, including MAC cosmetic lines, a Netflix series, and podcasts. As a result, her cultural influence continues to be passed on and shared with future generations. This thesis focuses on three aspects of Selena and Selena y Los Dinos: Selena’s music, Selena’s performance aesthetic, and Selena’s fandom today. Chapter 1 focuses on Selena y Los Dinos’ American musical influences, particularly studying the songs “Enamorada de ti,” “Missing my Baby,” and “Fotos y Recuerdos” and the presence of American genres of new jack swing, R&B, and rock within them. Chapter 2 focuses on …

Voices Through The Streets Of The South Valley: Stories Of Querencia Lost And Reclaimed, Esther Garcia

Chicana and Chicano Studies ETDs

The South Valley is a rural community within the urban boundaries of the City of

Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is predominantly populated by minorities from diverse ethnicities and linked to the City of Albuquerque through limited access thoroughfares. The South Valley, composed of inhabitants who have lived in the area for generations, also includes returnees or those who are new to the valley. On any given day, within these neighborhoods, economic and social problems manifest themselves on the streets and threaten to deteriorate the seams of the community. Nevertheless, given the prevalent socio-economic challenges, South Valley residents appear to demonstrate …

La Llorona, Picante Pero Sabroso: The Mexican Horror Legend As A Story Of Survival And A Reclamation Of The Monster, Camille Maria Acosta

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

For centuries, the relationship between Mexico and its infatuation with scary stories has been profoundly complex, but why? Perhaps it is the easiest way to communicate a Mexican culture, although proud and resilient, riddled with haunting narratives. For myself personally, the Mexican horror narrative La Llorona has served as a lens for conversation and communication that is unique and important.

In this thesis, I explore how Mexicans and Mexican Americans alike use the legend of La Llorona as a unique form of communication through personifying what truly haunts us. From using the narrative as a tool for entertainment, cautionary tales, …

Community Engagement In Tpc Programs During Times Of Crisis: Embracing Chicana And Latina Feminist Practices, Nora Rivera, Laura Gonzales

English Faculty Articles and Research

Drawing on lessons gathered while teaching community engagement in technical communication courses during the COVID-19 pandemic, two Latina instructors, one in New Mexico and one in Florida, highlight the value that Chicana and Latina feminism can bring to technical communication pedagogies. The authors share course assignments and student examples that demonstrate their applications of Chicana/Latina feminist practices in technical communication. Through pláticas and testimonios, methodologies and methods grounded in Latina/Chicana feminism, the authors demonstrate how they navigate the challenges of the pandemic while also creating spaces for students to share, heal, and contribute to the activist work taking place in …

Television Viewing And Latino Stereotypes, Gustavo Rivera

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Over the course of a modern lifetime, television viewing accounts for a significant amount of information taken in by viewers. Within that consumption lies a potential problem. Viewers may learn erroneous messages about people and the world. Since television has characterized Latinos in ways that have emphasized cultural stereotypes, viewers may learn to perceive them in a corresponding manner. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of 403 students from five universities and two community colleges located in Northern California. The respondents completed a seventy-one item questionnaire. Five key variables were utilized to measure relationships between them. The key variables …

The Ballet Folklórico De San Antonio: A Vehicle Of Empowerment And Cultural Preservation Through Dance, Victoria Villasenor

Capstone Projects

Since the mid 20th century, ballet folklórico has been a source of community, identity, and = celebration for Mexican Americans across the United States. Despite the popularity throughout Texas, its migration from Mexico to the United States is not well-documented nor widely known. Utilizing digital media, oral histories, personal artifacts, and archives this project is an effort to capture the development of ballet folklórico in San Antonio as a pillar of the city’s identity and reputation as culturally distinct. I share this history through the perspectives and experiences of the Ballet Folklórico de San Antonio (BFSA) dance company as they …

An Offering On The Altar Of Queer History: Amalia Mesa-Bains And Sor Juana’S Library, Maria P. Chaves Daza

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper argues that home altars are archives. I consider the history of altars within Chicana community practices; political, and feminist critique of both patriarchal nationalism; and the role of the altar in challenging the public and private divide defined by nationalist discourses of the US and Aztlan. Furthermore, I use Amalia Mesa-Bains’s altar installation The Library of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz to consider how altars are spaces of feminist queer memory-making and resistance against colonial logics.

Radical Rattlers: A Narrative Of Latino Students At St. Mary’S University In The 1960’S, Edgar Velazquez Reynald

Capstone Projects

In the 1960s, St. Mary’s University saw an increase in Latino enrollment and a shift in student political attitudes from confidence in established politics in the early 1960s to radical activism at the end of the decade. The transition occurred as students engaged with the Civil Rights movement and then the Chicano movement. St. Mary’s distanced itself from radical forms of protest, as best exemplified by the formation off campus of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) off campus, arguably the lynchpin of the Chicano movement in San Antonio. Attempting a reconciliation, St. Mary’s declared the 1969-1970 school year The …

Deported Veterans: The Unintended Consequences Of “Good Moral Character”, Jonathan Deras

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research is to argue that U.S. immigration policy, specifically the 1996 IIRIRA (also known as IIRAIRA), needs to change regarding the legal treatment of immigrant U.S. military veteran deportees due to the following concepts. The first concept is to articulate how the criminalization of immigration, and how the military system intersects to facilitate the Deportation of U.S veterans. A key concept in this analysis is the standard of “good moral character” set by the U.S. government that enlistees need to meet to be accepted into the military; this standard is also used against immigrant veterans during …

Broadening Perspectives: Using Multiple Teaching Approaches To Meet The Needs Of Language Students, Kalen Taylor

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is comprised of research, opinions, and ideas that the author has learned during the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University (USU). It is a representation of experiences gained through teaching lower division Spanish courses at USU. In addition to experiences, it is also comprised of research perspectives which were furthered by coursework in the MSLT program.

Contained within the pages is a road map of the author’s journey of learning and research. The portfolio begins with the author’s perspectives on teaching including his philosophy on teaching and how he has developed by observing …

Building Bridges: Epistemic Violence And Mother–Daughter Pedagogies From The U.S.–Mexico Border, Tanya J. Gaxiola Serrano, Elvia Serrano

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Living in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, residents have intimately learned about the impact of the militarized policing of the physical border on their lives. While not often discussed, the policing transcends the border institution and targets the ways of knowing of People and Immigrants of Color. This essay features pláticas between two Mexican women educators from the border, la frontera, to challenge epistemic violence on the lives of U.S. Chicanas/Latinas. Intergenerational pedagogies of a mother–daughter dyad from the Tijuana–San Diego region serve as exemplars of the survival and resistance found in the borderlands. The narratives highlight their unique experiences, one as …

“If Aristotle Had Cooked”: Contemporary Feminist Practices Within The Rhetoric Of Young Latinas’ Spoken Word Performances, Nora K. Rivera

English Faculty Articles and Research

Over three hundred years have passed since Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the first feminist in the Americas, wrote her famous response defending her right to learn and to speak through her poetry. Today, the spoken word poetry of Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Denice Frohman, Mercedez Holtry, Melania Luisa Marte, and Elizabeth Acevedo grapples with the same matters Sor Juana did more than three hundred years ago. This article analyzes the feminist practices within the rhetoric of the spoken word performances of Lozada-Oliva, Frohman, Holtry, Marte, and Acevedo by positioning their work as performed testimonios (Blackmer Reyes and Curry Rodriguez 2012; …

American Dirt - Event Flier, St. Mary's University

American Dirt

This flier advertises a presentation held on September 30th, 2020 discussing the controversial text, American Dirt and the problem of Latinx and Black representation in literature and media.

To Protect And To Serve: Effects Of The Relationship Between The Brown Berets And Law Enforcement, Paul Flores

History in the Making

During the late 1960s and into the early 1970s the Brown Berets were heavily involved in the Chicano Movement. They formed as a group of students with the goal of reforming the inequalities Hispanic people faced within the Los Angeles school system, though the greater circumstances quickly led the Brown Berets into the direction of being a militant organization with their focus shifting to police brutality and the Vietnam War. As a result of this shift they became an enemy of the local police and later the federal government. Thus, the Berets adopted the motto, “To Serve, Observe, and Protect,” …

Chicanx Murals: Decolonizing Place And (Re)Writing The Terms Of Composition, Nora K. Rivera

English Faculty Articles and Research

Drawing from an interpretive decolonial framework that understands multimodal writing as the act of creating co-composed knowledge, this article analyzes Chicanx murals as multimodal compositions that exemplify the continuation of the Aztec tlacuilolitztli practice of writing with images. This work also invites rhetoric and composition scholars to reexamine Western understandings of history, particularly the history of writing.

You Are Resilient: Trauma-Informed, Strengths-Based Treatment For Low-Ses, Urban Youth, Courtney Molina

Dissertations

The focus in this review was to explore the benefits and optimal use of trauma-informed, strengths-based care for the therapeutic treatment of low-socioeconomic status (SES), urban youth. Specific focus was given to evidence-based research on the treatment of emotional and behavioral dysregulation among low-SES, urban youth. The review was guided by the following research questions: How can emotional and behavioral dysregulation be symptoms of trauma among low-SES, urban youth; What makes trauma-informed and strengths-based care optimal for the treatment of low-SES, urban youth with dysregulation; and What are clear guidelines for providing trauma-informed, strengths-based care to low-SES, urban youth with …

Shared Spaces, Separate Lives: Community Formation In The California Citrus Industry During The Great Depression, David Shanta

History in the Making

The California citrus industry was the engine for the economic and cultural development of twentieth century Southern California. Studies have also focused on citrus as specialty crop agriculture. Its labor usage pattern required the economic, social, and political powerlessness of its workers. Growers and workers shared the spaces of the citrus groves and packinghouses, but otherwise led largely separate lives, delineated by class and race. Community formation during the Great Depression is examined from each perspective – dominant Anglo grower society and workers of Mexican descent. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism provides a …

Imperial Myths, Abject Devotion: Mapping Affect In New Mexican Visual Culture And Discourse, N. C. Lira-Pérez

American Studies ETDs

New Mexican visual art and culture, as molded by state-sanctioned endeavors, is often casted in order to conceal the tension, conflict, and violence of settler colonialism and imperialism. Widely known myths of empire, such as the Tricultural myth, create a visualizing enterprise through which settler colonial logics transit and create political material reality. This thesis explores the following questions: How do New Mexican Hispanos and queer Chicanxs position themselves in relation to the logics of settler colonialism and empire? How are they positioned in relation to settler colonialism and empire? On the one hand, I argue that the state of …

Intergenerational Family Learning Programs: Stories Of Latinx, Immigrant Families And Their Journeys To And Through Higher Education, Monica Ramos

Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This research presents the stories of three Latinx families who participated in an intergenerational family program. I endeavored to understand their experiences navigating the American system of education and their immigrant stories. Their narratives revealed significant details that can serve as integral elements in the development of an intergenerational learning curriculum based on culture, language, and traditions, and that steps away from the assumptions that perpetrate the deficit-based narratives about Latino families and higher education. Their hopes provide points for further research and advocacy. In this qualitative study, I collected data using semi-structured interviews, including documents and artifacts. The …