Chicana/o Studies Commons^™

Costa Rican Culture Of Love, Melissa Johnson

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This collection of photographs explores how the collectivist and vibrant culture of Costa Rica manifests as a profound sense of love, shared among humans, animals, and the land. This project celebrates the spirit of Costa Rica as a whole, where human connection, respect for the environment, and a genuine sense of community intertwine.

A Story To Tell: My Unforgettable Experience, Isabela Jimenez

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

A personal reflection about an unforgettable, eye-opening experience in Costa Rica. Meeting locals in different destinations, learning new lessons.

Global Parallels: A Reflection On Civil Rights And Ethical Consumerism In Costa Rica, Anonymous

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This reflection on the First to Go trip to Costa Rica examines the civil rights issues faced in the country. In particular, it highlights the significant parallels with the United States, especially concerning immigrant communities. During our time there we specifically talked about the exploitation of immigrant labor on pineapple plantations by corporations like Del Monte. This trip underscored my understanding of ethical consumerism and a new approach to mindful purchasing.

What Is A "Pure Life"?, Ailani Anglin

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

A personal reflection about encountering new experiences in Costa Rica. The comparision between living in Costa Rica and the U.S, how fortunate we are to have many opportunities in this country.

Costa Rica, Costa Rica, Natalia Zevallos

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

Short poem about the unique experiences while in Costa Rica.

Esa Mariposa, Carolina Hernandez

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This free-write poem was written with a purpose of making meaning of the Blue Morpho butterfly I continuously saw abroad in Costa Rica. Being able to have captivating conversations with locals all while being comforted by the country’s blanket of communal love was an unforgettable experience. As a metaphor for change, growth, and transformation, I found this remarkable butterfly to be a highlight of my time in Costa Rica. As a symbol of my late father, it called for reflection and sitting with suppressed emotions. For that reason, I wanted to depict how its reappearing presence became a hopeful reminder …

Radical Love: Embracing Connection And Dismantleing Shame, Lisette Gonzalez

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

It is essential to maintain love, care, and connection in the face of oppressive systems. There needs to be a call for bravery to get through the challenges that many face, Costa Rica being one of them.

Introduction

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

Inside the introduction of "Pure Vida: Reflections from Costa Rica", readers will find an illustration by Leyna Tran, “Meet the Team” section and a detailed table of contents, guiding readers through this edition.

Patchwork: 76km Between Juárez And El Paso, Naheyla Medina

Masters Theses

Located at the western edge of Texas where the Río Bravo ~ Rio Grande, becomes the border between México and the United States. Resides a spectacle of misconceptions that, along with an expansive corten steel border wall embedded into the earth, live to suppress the histories, culture, and environment entangled together like patchwork along this border space. The built environment influences our daily experiences, and our daily experiences can often influence our built environment. This project seeks to leverage, murals as a medium, creative writing, and architectural representations, to rework the mapping between Mexico and the US. Honing in on …

Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón

Masters Theses

Industrial Tenderness surveys the relationship between visual language, cultural expression, and diasporic practices through the design of functional sculptures. These designed objects seek to communicate cultural legibility, or intuitive cultural belonging, to Mexican-American peoples by challenging legacy notions of design language. Through a proposed design language framework and designed objects, Industrial Tenderness seeks to affirm a pluriversal practice of industrial design.

Legacy industrial design confines design language to a heavily prescriptive canon, resulting in a stark monocultural language that is unrepresentative of perspectives outside of a legacy dominant white eurocentricity founded in thinking from the Bauhaus and Ulm schools. Through …

A Tribe Laud West 1 : Hip-Hop And Its Influence On Tribal Gear And A New Chicano Generation, Monique Charles

Sociology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"

It should be noted that despite the general counterculture of SoCal in the late 1980s, at the time of Tribal's birth, the laid-back attitude of generation X (1965–80),4 which included apathy and disillusion with the political and 92 economic climate (that “grungy” college educated/tech savvy white American generation Xers experienced under Reagan's neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism), was vastly different to Black and Brown youth in major cities across the United States. Black and Brown people were marginalized on grounds of race, which was exacerbated by police brutality, neighborhoods flooded with drugs (Love, 2016) and weapons, horizontal violence (see Fanon, 2001) …

“Muy Curiosa Y Muy Diestra”: Bobbin Lace Making In Eighteenth-Century Mexico, Elena Kanagy-Loux

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Although bobbin lace was introduced in Mexico through colonization, its local styling—both through making and end use—was by no means a facsimile of its Spanish origins. The appreciation for this “curious and skilled” trimming grew from a long Indigenous history of valuing skilled textile production in the Americas, and lace was quickly interpreted in new ways. Grounded in extant 18th-century objects such as metallic bobbin lace fragments and colchas (or coverlets) with polychrome wool bobbin lace edgings, this project poses the question: what untold stories of the lives of women and girls can these objects reveal? And can this method …

The Petticoat: Details Of A Forgotten Garment In Mexico City (1900–1910), Nallely Rangel Vázquez

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During Porfirian government, Mexican society experienced a flourishing of the textile industry driven by state policies that encouraged both the rise of the national industry and foreign investment. This process was perceived from the daily life of the capital, through the windows of silk shops, shoe shops, warehouses and, above all, the imposing department store El Palacio de Hierro. One of the garments that was designed to fit at the waist and cover the legs was the petticoat, which was assumed to be a piece of female underwear. In this article, I am interested in unravelling details findings about this …

Espacio, Edgar Perez Peña, Edgar Perez Peña

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Edgar Perez Peña (He, Him, His) is a Queer, Chicanx contemporary figurative painter, who lives and works in the Los Angeles County. A native of Los Angeles, California, his paintings, and assemblages are a strong combination of process, materials, and content that displays his fascination on how physical/psychological space (from where he resides), reflects on the Queer Brown body and its comfort/discomfort in relation to public and private space.

Peña looks at his artistic practice as an opportunity to explore the human condition from the Queer and Brown perspective as well the beginning of healing through the meditative process of …

Questions Of Canon In Gilbert Hernandez's "Palomar" Comics, Martin Dolan

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

While questions of misrepresentation are starting to be addressed in academia — acknowledging racial, cultural, gender, and artistic diversity — there is still much work to be done to close the gap between the literary canon and what contemporary literature actually looks like. These efforts have been a step in the right direction, but representation of unconventional literatures is often spotty, boiling down entire literary scenes into one book. This is especially true for those that offer formal or structural challenges – including multilingual and graphic narratives that don’t easily fit into a canonical “box.”

Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar comics, serialized …

La Cultura Que No Cambia, Karina Arreola-Gutierrez

MFA in Visual Art

In the text of La Cultura Que No Cambia, I mention how my work has been influenced by becoming more aware of generations of altar making that occur in my family. By collecting stories and photographs of altars, I can observe and create work based on how the legacies can change through generations or stay the same. The memory of my ancestors and family traditions is strengthened. Growing up seeing discrimination towards others has influenced me to highlight my Mexican heritage of traditions, culture, and language through several different methods. Using these elements, I can create work informing audiences about …

Textiled Narratives: Branding, Consumption, And Mexican American Identity At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Andrew Michael Gordus

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

The NaCo apparel company out of Tijuana, Mexico, created a unique line of clothing and accessories in the late 1990s and early 2000s. With its success in Mexico, the brand chose to extend its reach into the lucrative US market. The company's focus on bicultural and binational images seemed a natural fit for a growing Latinx presence in the US. An analysis of the company's successes and failures in the new market highlights the continued importance of borders as separators of visual economies rooted in national histories and imaginations. Additionally, their experience reveals the complexities within Latinx communities that can …

Bibliography For "Chicano Art: A Display In Celebration Of Hispanic Heritage", Margaret Puentes

Library Displays and Bibliographies

A bibliography created to accompany a display about Chicano Art for National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15-October 15, 2021, at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University.

Inevitable Associations: Art, Institution, And Cultural Intersection In Los Angeles, 1973–1988, Liz Hirsch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Inevitable Associations: Art, Institution, and Cultural Intersection in Los Angeles, 1973-1988 considers alternative institutions and cultural intersections in bicentennial-era Los Angeles. I look at the spatial, social, and artistic convergence of Los Angeles artists rarely seen as allied, through close examination of alternative cultural infrastructure that came out of a federal jobs program called the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and cohered around a building located at 240 South Broadway in downtown. I use the model of association—alliance through shared purpose—to demonstrate moments of convergence and interconnection. Through an analysis of the formation of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), …

Aztlán Del Sol, Marcus Zúñiga

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

An artistic writing developed from the themes and concepts of an of art installation made by a visual artist of Mexican-American descent from New Mexico. The work references the relationship of Aztec mythology to the American Southwest, art theoretical discourse in object oriented ontology and aesthetics, and key ideas in astronomy. Additionally interwoven is an expanded sense for interpreting ancestry and history under the constructs of multicultural conceptions of time, specifically cultures with notable spiritual rituals of Sun worship and observation.

Cosmic Desert Art, Mike Graham De La Rosa

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

The Cosmic Desert are the designs inspired by chile hallucinations, desert creatures, and the long weird neon nights in the Borderworld. Made with love on the banks of the Rio Grande.

My family is originally from Northern Mexico but I grew up in Northern New Mexico down river of both where Al Hurricane and Nuclear Annihilation were originally created. Amongst chollas, rattle snakes, and river willow, the imagining of New Mexico permeates the landscapes. The Cosmic Desert is inhabited lowriders, taco trucks, neon adobe bars, cholas, native peoples, immigrants, punk rockers and cowboys. Just beyond the darkness, our imagination takes …

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.

The Migrant Times, Jessenya Guerra

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This senior capstone newspaper shows how the Mexican diaspora has become integrated into American culture.

Reworking The White-Masculine Ideal, Steven H. Gonzalez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This text functions as an exploration of self through artistic practice, a designated space for reflection on contemporary Queer experience. In looking specifically at the permeation of the idealized-white-masculine figure as found within Western visual culture, social media and gay pornography become isolated as sites where these figures are commonly found. This line of inquiry defines how the ideal is reified through these differing digital platforms and the social implications the homogenized male form has on raced individuals. In addition to determining the image of the perfect masculine physique through research, this text expands on how its' imaged representation becomes …

Lotion In Your Lungs, Raul H. De Lara

Theses and Dissertations

This is a document explaining in detail my artistic practice from childhood to the day I graduated VCU. It will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already felt such ways, or similar ways – words and ghosts are mostly invisible.

Yes We Can Can, Eliseo Angel Casiano

LSU Master's Theses

Yes We Can Can is a compilation of paintings and short stories that depict my placement and role among substantially white rural communities in the South. Through portraiture in painting, I interpret family and biographical events that examine representations of race, family relationships, and my maneuverability through a space of otherness.

Casiano, 2018

Precolumbian Textile Conference Vii / Jornadas De Textiles Precolombinos Vii, Lena Bjerregaard, Ann H. Peters

Zea E-Books Collection

Contents:

Introduction — Lena Bjerregaard and Ann Peters

Mexico

1. Mesoamerican Archaeological Textiles: An Overview of Materials, Techniques, and Contexts — Laura Filloy Nadal

2. Urdimbres enlazadas de Mesoamérica. Textil de la Cueva del Gallo, Morelos, México — Patricia Ochoa Castillo & Rosa Lorena Román Torres •

3. Los textiles procedentes del actual estado de Guerrero, México: una revisión a su estudio desde la perspectiva arqueológica y etnohistórica — Elizabeth Jiménez García

4. Classic Textiles from Cueva del Lazo (Chiapas, Mexico). Archaeological context and conservation issues — Davide Domenici & Gloria Martha Sánchez Valenzuela

5. Textiles y otros materiales arqueológicos …

Classic Textiles From Cueva Del Lazo (Chiapas, Mexico): Archaeological Context And Conservation Issues, Davide Domenici, Gloria Martha Sánchez Valenzuela

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

The excavation of Cueva del Lazo, a cave on the cliffs of the Río La Venta River canyon in the Zoque region of Western Chiapas (Mexico), led to the discovery of a complex Late Classic post-sacrificial context where eleven children were buried wrapped in textile bundles. The environmental conditions of the dry cave allowed an extraordinary preservation of perishable materials including textiles, cordages, botanical remains, etc. In the first part of the paper we provide a brief introduction to the archaeology of the Selva El Ocote, as well as a description and interpretation of the Cueva del Lazo archaeological context. …

Urdimbres Enlazadas De Mesoamérica. Textil De La Cueva Del Gallo, Morelos, México, Patricia Ochoa Castillo, Rosa Lorena Román Torres

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

Los ejemplos de textiles arqueológicos que se encuentran en la República mexicana son muy escasos debido entre otras cosas al suelo húmedo. Los hallazgos de textiles arqueológicos son considerados casi milagros de la arqueología y de la conservación, tal es el caso de la colección de textiles de la Cueva del Gallo, en Ticumán Morelos, México. El objeto de este trabajo es la contextualización y análisis textil de un lienzo completo encontrado en esta cueva en 1991 elaborado con urdimbres enlazadas, teñido con azul índigo o añil y grana cochinilla, que dio inicio al Proyecto Arqueológico de Ticumán (PAT) en …

Mesoamerican Archaeological Textiles: An Overview Of Materials, Techniques, And Contexts, Laura Filloy Nadal

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

In Mesoamerica, unlike the Andean area, there are few instances when climatic conditions allow the preservation of the organic raw materials constituting ancient fabrics. Examples of such textiles conserved in Mexican museums are quite limited, thus even the tiniest fragments recovered in archaeological contexts greatly augment our understanding of ancient weaving technologies and their use in Mesoamerican societies. Most of the surviving fabrics come from dry caves in northern Mexico, but in recent days the exploration of relatively inaccessible rock shelters in southern Mexico has led to the recovery of additional textiles from early times that are associated with funerary …