Chicana/o Studies Commons^™

¡Estamos Aqui!: The Underrepresentation Of Latinos In Professional Sports And Sports Media, Antonio Hernandez

University Honors Theses

The Latino population has had a long and complicated history within the United States. Since the turn of the 21st century, Latinos continue to become the largest minority group within the country. As the Latino population continues to rise, other industries have failed to properly represent the community. Within the world of professional sports, Latinos continue to be grossly underrepresented, with professional athletes from Latino backgrounds representing less than 6% of all professional athletes across all disciplines. This number is just under ¼ of the total percentage of Latinos within the United States. With Latino's influence of other cultural phenomena …

A Place To Rest My Soul: How A Doctoral Student Of Color Group Utilized A Healing-Centered Space To Navigate Higher Education, Jessica I. Ramirez

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Students of Color have historically faced explicit and implicit forms of discrimination and oppression in educational settings. Unfortunately, not much has changed over the decades as Students of Color continue to experience white supremacy and other systems of oppression. As Students of Color enter graduate school, there are often fewer Students of Color, making these educational settings isolating and hostile. These experiences often encompass white supremacist policies, practices, and remarks that negatively impact Students of Color. With this in mind and as someone who identifies as a Chicana who was once in a doctoral program, I questioned how doctoral Students …

The Realm That I Am: An Interdisciplinary Memoir On Identity And Healing, Maria Rowen Flores

University Honors Theses

This thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration into identity, self, and meaning-making. Engaging queer studies, Chicano/a Studies, narrative therapy, creative nonfiction, and visual arts, this project is both a collage and self-portrait in two parts. Part one uses the ideas of philosophers Gloria Anzaldúa, María Lugones, Jack Halberstam, and Judith Butler to explore identity formation in the author’s family and social contexts. Part two follows the experience of having C-PTSD and uses memoir and creative writing to explore the narrative therapeutic mode. Both sections explore themes of identity, social isolation, relationships, failure, mental illness, trauma, and addiction. The work is underscored …

Looking At The Past To Change The Future: Showcasing Featured Collections, Building Communities, And Co-Creating, Sherry Buchanan

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Academic libraries have the opportunity and the responsibility to promote and advance content that creates transformative and iterative learning opportunities. To that end, and in an effort to build communities and facilitate co-creation, Portland State University showcases three main Featured Collections in our open access repository, PDXScholar: Climate Justice, COVID-19, and Racial and Gender Equity, with a fourth pilot collection—Student Work: An Open Showcase of Outstanding Student-Created Research & Creative Work—under development. The collections include a broad range of audiovisual materials, such as podcasts and webinar series, as well as sustainability and equity work, student-created content, and numerous future-focused multidisciplinary …

Using Queer Of Color Theory To Analyze Latinidad, Maria I. Castro-Mendoza

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

Queer of Color Theory (QOCT) has emerged as a new field of study with the rise of LGBTQ+ visibility in the modern day political landscape. QOCT is an extended analysis of queer theory that explicitly and intentionally takes into account race, imperialism, and colonialism. Queer of color theory can be used to create or expand upon an already existing theory, and has roots in Black feminism. Using queer of color theory as a method of analysis, this essay discusses the black and indigenous erasure within the Latinidad movement and seeks to examine those who have been systemically left out of …

Review Of The Book Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias And The Struggle For Equality, By T. K. Hernández, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is a book review of Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality - Tanya Katerí Hernández, Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2022, 216pp., $24.95, ISBN: 978-0807020135 (hardcover).

"It Snows Year-Round Here": A Counterstory About Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students’ Experiences With Racism At A Predominantly White University In The Northeast, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using critical race theory counterstorytelling, I tell a story about the experiences of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) undergraduate students at a private, predominantly white university in the Northeast. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, and document analyses, I highlight the various ways MMAX students experience discrimination on campus. More specifically, discrimination and unsettledness are experienced by MMAX students through the following ways: 1) Racist Name Calling and Racial Slurs; 2) Discrimination by Professors; and 3) Class Discussions as Microaggressions. Through counterstories like this one, I argue that we can shed light on injustices while staying true to our ancestral ways …

How Latino Anti-Blackness Upholds Racism In The United States: A Counterstory Book Review Of Tanya Katerí Hernández’S Racial Innocence, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this piece, the author uses counterstorytelling as a research method to write a book review of Tanya Katerí Hernández’s recently published book, Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality. Specifically, in this counterstory, the author created two composite characters, Alberto and his mother, Lola, made up of arguments from the book to engage in a real and critical dialogue about the anti-Blackness amongst Latinos in the United States. Drawing on Hernández’s argument that Latino anti-Blackness upholds racism, the author uses this counterstory to illustrate the various ways Latinos enact anti-Black ideologies and practices to …

The Future And Thriving Of Bipoc Communities: A Time To Act Macroconvening, Global Diversity & Inclusion, Portland State University

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

This is the overview of the "Time to Act Macroconvening," an event bringing together the BIPOC community on November 4, 2022. The macroconvening was shaped by five affinity-based convenings that were held from June to November 2022. Each engagement was unique, but centered around discussions of the future of thriving and joy of BIPOC communities in and around Portland, and what role PSU has in bringing this future to bear.

Main downloadable file:
Affinity Convenings Thematic Overview

Additional files:

• Event graphic
• Overview article by Christina Rojas, "PSU Brings Together BIPOC Community Groups to Envision a Thriving Future."
• Pictorial Summary of …

The Right To The University: The Experiences Of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students At A Predominantly White University In Upstate New York, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Having the right to a space is not only the right to be present without being harassed or bothered, but it also includes the right to have a say in how that space should be experienced. Yet, spaces have long been contested and not everyone has equal access to shared spaces. This paper examines the experiences of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) undergraduate students at a predominantly white university in the Northeast. Drawing on indepth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, and document analyses, I argue that MMAX students do not have the right to their respective university because their university does not address …

When The Lion Learns To Write: A Counterstory About A Doctoral Student's Qualitative Research Project, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay utilizes critical race theory composite counterstorytelling to tell a story about Alberto, a first-generation Xicano doctoral student who is presenting his dissertation research proposal to his qualitative research class. Through Alberto’s character, I discuss my complicated process of designing and conducting a research study. Specifically, I reflect on why I decided to study the experiences of Mexican, Mexican American, and Xicanx students in higher education, why I used critical race theory, Latinx/a/o critical race theory, and critical race spatial analysis as theoretical frameworks, why I utilized critical collaborative ethnography as my research approach, and why I chose counterstorytelling …

Ssita: Seal Serving Institutional Transformation Assessment: Excelencia In Education & Portland State University, Cynthia Carmina Gómez, Oscar Fernandez, Cristina Herrera, Emanuel Magaña, Allyson Meyers, Perla Pinedo, Rebecca Rodas, Tanya Sanchez

Global Diversity and Inclusion Publications and Presentations

In the Spring of 2022, Portland State University was invited to participate in Excelencia in Education’s pilot Seal Serving Institutional Transformation Assessment or SSITA. This SSITA report is a preliminary institutional assessment of Portland State University’s (PSU) efforts to intentionally serve Latiné students and advance degree completion. Between now and June 2023, a committee of faculty, staff, and students will lead the effort to complete a Seal of Excelencia application. We will reach out to all parts of the institution to gather additional information, data, and stories about how units serve our growing Latiné student population. The next round of …

Horchata: A Counterstory About A Mexican-Based Student Organization As A Counter-Space At A Predominantly White University, Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article utilizes critical race theory counterstorytelling to tell a story about ¡Poder Xicanx!, a Mexican-based student organization at a private, predominantly white university in the Northeast of the United States. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, and document analysis, I document the educational experiences of 20 Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) undergraduate students who participated in ¡Poder Xicanx!. Specifically, I argue that ¡Poder Xicanx! functions as a counter-space, which is a site or space where MMAX students can challenge stereotypes, deal with racism, and empower one another. Moreover, I also highlight the fact that ¡Poder Xicanx! allows for members …

Student Movements In The United States And Mexico: A Testimony, Roberto M. De Anda

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The author reflects on his experiences teaching and going to graduate school in Mexico City in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I discuss my participation in Chicano Movement organizations before moving to Mexico, and the reasons that propelled me to go to graduate school there. I highlight lessons learned teaching as a volunteer at a normal popular, or people’s teachers college, and as a professor at the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo (UACh). I also describe my graduate studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). The conclusion focuses on the impact that these experiences had on the author’s professional …

The Trials Of Displacement: Transnationalism And Interdisciplinary Feminisms In Demetria Martínez’S The Block Captain’S Daughter, Elena Avilés

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

From the fifteenth century to the twenty-first century, the interaction between dispossession and displacement are central questions Martinez channels in writing. Her work represents the struggle of contemporary feminist interventions on issues of international migration within the annals of the New Mexican borderlands. The power to generate reflexivity about gendered displacement begins to remap vision of identity in print that brings the reader to wage the multiple values of American society. Innovations to the experiences of women of multiethnic backgrounds are perhaps one of the strengths of her latest narrative.

Albuquerque is a backdrop where shifts and dislocations of the …

Reading Latinx And Lgbtq+ Perspectives: Maya Christina Gonzalez And Equity Minded Models At Play, Elena Avilés

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Through an equity-minded model, this essay addresses the work of Maya Christina Gonzalez and the new visions of gender she offers in children’s literature with My Colors, My World (2007). This essay frames the presence of Chicana/Latina feminist non-conforming perspectives on gender as chillante aesthetics and analyzes Gonzalez’s advancement of Latinx and LGBTQ+ standpoints in the following texts Call Me Tree/Llámale árbol (2014), I Am Free to Be Me: Gender Now Activity Book (2011) and Claiming Face: Self-empowerment Through Self-Portraiture: An Educator's Guide to Building the Powerful Link between Creativity and a Sense of Self (2010).

Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, And The Cultures Of Greater Mexico, By José David Saldívar, Elena Avilés

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This book review evaluates the latest publication of comparative inter-American scholar José David Saldívar.

Chicanos In Oregon: An Historical Overview, Richard Wayne Slatta

Dissertations and Theses

Spaniards were the first Europeans to explore the Pacific Northwest coastline, but the only evidence of these early visits is a sprinkling of Spanish place names commemorating the intrepid voyagers. The more than four centuries of recorded history since that time are nearly devoid, of references to Spanish-speaking people, especially Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent (Chicanos). Even the heavy influx of Chicano migrant farm workers in the 1950's and 1960's failed to attract the attention of historians or social science researchers. By 1970, the Spanish-language population had become Oregon's largest ethnic minority and was exerting influence in most areas …