by Maria C. Gonzelez, NACCS Chair

Dear NACCS members:

Let me begin by welcoming our newly elected Chair-Elect, Dr. Deena Gonzalez, a long-time member of NACCS and internationally recognized historian, and our newly elected At Large Representative, Dr. Jennifer Gomez Menjivar from the University of North Texas in the field of Media Arts, to the NACCS Board of Directors.  We welcome them both and are thrilled to have them as part of the leadership.

And now for some exciting news, if all goes well, we will finally get to meet again in person in Denver in early spring.  Included in this newsletter is the call for papers for our annual conference.  The title, “Work, Sustainability, and Resilience in the Post-Pandemic,” represents the concerns many of us have now that we have to navigate a historical moment we have never been a part of.  Please review the call and submit.  We have changed the deadline date for the NACCS proposal from our usual mid-October date to November 15 (this is an exception and only for this year).  I encourage everyone to prepare their proposals and submit them.  The proposal link is here: https://www.naccs.org/naccs/Submit.asp. 

Directing your attention to our finance report in this newsletter, I thank our outgoing treasurer, Ernesto Colon, and our incoming treasurer, Francisco Villegas, for their work in getting this report done and ready for our membership.  We begin our new fiscal year in fair shape but remain financially fragile.  Please get your membership in for the 2022-23 year.  As you may remember from our previous communications (Membership meeting, 4-23-22; Greetings, 7-19-22), we have moved our calendar year membership dates to reflect our actual fiscal year.  All memberships run July 1 to June 30.  So currently, most of us need to renew our memberships now.

Currently, the Board is working on planning and preparing for this coming year.  As our organization is now 50 years-old and we need to periodically review our processes, I have recommended, and the Board has approved an ad-hoc committee to review our governance practices and our organizational structure.  The chair will be our immediate Past-Chair, Roberto Hernandez, who will lead this self-study of NACCS.  Over the next year, Roberto and his committee will review and prepare a written report with recommendations for the governance of our organization.  Once that report is completed, we will be ready to commit to an external review of NACCS.

In reviewing our membership records and finances, I also recommended, and the Board has approved an ad-hoc committee on membership.  Currently because of Covid and our inability to meet in person, our membership is at approximately 200 paid members.  William Calvo-Quiros has kindly agreed to chair an ad-hoc membership committee to work on getting our numbers up.  I hope to have recommendations from that committee in approximately six months.

Finally, I look forward to seeing everyone in Denver in early spring of 2023.

Fall 2022 – Vol. 48. No. 1

The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies announces its annual Frederick A. Cervantes Student Premio. NACCS seeks submissions from Undergraduate and Graduate scholars. Submissions must contribute to Chicana and Chicano Studies, an interdisciplinary area of study. Papers will be judged on: their contribution to the field of Chicana and Chicano Studies; strength of scholarship (e.g., how well researched and/or theoretically well-developed they are); and originality. Composition and style will also be considered. The Premio carries a monetary honorarium of $350.00, the opportunity to submit the paper for publication review in the NACCS proceedings, and the opportunity to present the paper at the annual meetings.

COMPETITION/SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Participants must be enrolled at an institution of higher education and be members of NACCS. To join the association, complete a membership submission.

The first page must be a cover page with the title and student designation. Since this is a blind read your name should not appear in the following pages. Authors must follow appropriate writing manual guidelines, e.g. APA, MLA or Chicago Manual of Style. Papers must be fully referenced, typed, double-spaced and use a 12 pt. Times New Roman font. Manuscript must be in a MICROSOFT WORD FORMAT and must not exceed 25 pages.

Although we are asking for an electronic submission note that any submission received that does not meet the above specifications will be automatically disqualified. Submissions must be emailed by November 13. Papers that arrive after this date will not be considered. Attach your file and email to cervantes@naccs.org.

NOTIFICATION OF AWARD
Notification will be issued prior to the conference. Awards will be announced during the NACCS conference. We encourage students to seek faculty mentorship in preparing their papers. Please contact the chair if you have any questions at cervantes@naccs.org if you have any questions about the guidelines or how to seek mentorship in preparing your submissions.

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This award is named for Frederick A. Cervantes, one of the first Chicano political scientists and a pioneer in the development of Chicano Studies. The award honors him for his scholarly work and for his commitment to students and student research.  Cervantes was a member of NACS [sic] in early years of the association. Cervantes received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1976. His dissertation was entitled “An interpretation of J.V. Stalin’s political thought.” Originally from Texas, Cervantes returned and held a faculty position in Corpus Christi at the University. On March 22, 1986, he was killed by a drunk driver in a motorcycle accident.

Fall 2022 – Vol. 48. No. 1

The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies invites nominations for the NACCS Scholar Award. The Award was established in 1981 to recognize “life achievement” contributions of scholars to Chicana and Chicano Studies. To ensure the special quality of the NACCS Scholar award, nominees should be scholars whom the majority of the NACCS membership would readily recognize.

This award is not necessarily an annual award. Nominations can only come from a Foco, Caucus, or the Board — not from individuals. The nominee must also be a member of the association. See past Scholar recipients

The nomination must included a CV and a two-page letter of nomination describing how the candidate meets the criterion set forth.

In addition to the letter of nomination, a complete packet must include supporting materials: for example, a selected list of publications, additional letters of support, etc. (Recent NACCS Scholars have had in excess of five additional supporting letters from prominent Chicana/o studies scholars across the country.)   All letters submitted must be originals and contain signatures.

The packet must be presented in a professional manner – this is the highest honor given by NACCS and packet should reflect this. The nominating Foco or Caucus should encounter little difficulty in gathering  necessary materials if time is factored in the planning. 

Nominations must be addressed to the NACCS Scholar Committee, must be submitted in paper form, and must be received on or before the stated deadline. Nominations received after the deadline or received in electronic format will not be considered.

Nominations from past years may be resubmitted only with additional supporting materials, although earlier supporting materials may also be reused provided they are not more than two years old. However, NACCS will not keep any previously submitted packets. Materials will not be returned.

The following criteria must be addressed:

1. A scholar’s history of involvement in the development of Chicana and Chicano studies as a discipline AND/OR an individual’s significant contributions to scholarly research and writing on the Mexican population of the United States; AND

2. An individual’s significant contribution to the NACCS organization.

The award is presented at the Annual Conference and carries a lifetime membership in NACCS.

NOMINATION DEADLINE: November 15. POSTMARKED.  Items only need to be POSTMARKED, overnight delivery is not necessary.  No FedEx or UPS mailings will be delivered. No CODs will be accepted. No faxes or e-mail are accepted.

Mail your nominee packet to:
NACCS
P.O. Box 720052
San Jose, CA 95172-0052

Questions regarding a packet should be addressed to your Foco representative, Caucus chair, the NACCS Chair or the Executive Director.

Fall 2022 – Vol. 48. No. 1

Congratulation to our members and their publications

Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights: Alonso S. Perales (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2022) by Cynthia E. Orozco

Professor Cynthia E. Orozco’s new book has been published: Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights: Alonso S. Perales (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2022). Orozco, Professor of History & Humanities, was also recently nominated and elected to the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians.

In this wide-ranging biography, historian Cynthia Orozco examines the life and work of one of the most influential Mexican Americans of the twentieth century. Alonso S. Perales was born in Alice, Texas, in 1898; he became an attorney, leading civil rights activist, author and US diplomat.

Perales was active in promoting and seeking equality for “La Raza” in numerous arenas. In 1929, he founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the most important Latino civil rights organization in the United States. He encouraged the empowerment of Latinos at the voting box and sought to pass state and federal legislation banning racial discrimination. He fought for school desegregation in Texas and initiated a movement for more and better public schools for Mexican-descent people in San Antonio.

In this wide-ranging biography, historian Cynthia Orozco examines the life and work of one of the most influential Mexican Americans of the twentieth century. Alonso S. Perales was born in Alice, Texas, in 1898; he became an attorney, leading civil rights activist, author and US diplomat.

Perales was active in promoting and seeking equality for “La Raza” in numerous arenas. In 1929, he founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the most important Latino civil rights organization in the United States. He encouraged the empowerment of Latinos at the voting box and sought to pass state and federal legislation banning racial discrimination. He fought for school desegregation in Texas and initiated a movement for more and better public schools for Mexican-descent people in San Antonio.

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho: The Journey of a Mexican Regional Music (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2022) by by Yolanda Broyles-González Contributions by Francisco González and Rafael Figueroa Hernández

Son Jarocho was born as the regional sound of Veracruz but over time became a Mexican national genre, even transnational, genre—a touchstone of Chicano identity in the United States. Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho traces a musical journey from the Gulf Coast to interior Mexico and across the border, describing the transformations of Son Jarocho along the way.

This comprehensive cultural study pairs ethnographic and musicological insights with an oral history of the late Mario Barradas, one of Son Jarocho’s preeminent modern musicians. Chicano musician Francisco González offers an insider’s account of Barradas’s influence and Son Jarocho’s musical qualities, while Rafael Figueroa Hernández delves into Barradas’s recordings and films. Yolanda Broyles-González examines the interplay between Son Jarocho’s indigenous roots and contemporary role in Mexican and US society. The result is a nuanced portrait of a vital and evolving musical tradition.

Yolanda Broyles-González is a University Distinguished Professor and chair of the American Ethnic Studies Department at Kansas State. She is the author of El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement, among other books.

Francisco González is a multi-instrument musician and a former member of the seminal folk-rock music group Los Lobos.

Rafael Figueroa Hernández is a cultural historian specializing in the study of Son Jarocho and other regional musical styles specific to the state of Veracruz and the Antilles at the Universidad Veracruzana.

Day of the Dead in the USA, The Migration and Transformation of a Cultural Phenomenon, 2nd Edition (New Burnswick, Rutgers University Press, 2022) by Regina M Marchi

Honoring relatives by tending graves, building altars, and cooking festive meals has been a major tradition among Latin Americans for centuries. The tribute, “El Día de los Muertos,” has enjoyed renewed popularity since the 1970s when Latinx activists and artists in the United States began expanding “Day of the Dead” north of the border with celebrations of performance art, Aztec danza, art exhibits, and other public expressions.
 
Focusing on the power of public ritual to serve as a communication medium, this revised and updated edition combines a mix of ethnography, historical research, oral history, and critical cultural analysis to explore the manifold and unexpected transformations that occur when the tradition is embraced by the mainstream. A testament to the complex role of media and commercial forces in constructions of ethnic identity, Day of the Dead in the USA provides insight into the power of art and ritual to create community, transmit oppositional messages, and advance educational, political, and economic goals.

Regina Marchi is a professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University—New Brunswick in New Jersey. She co-authored, with Lynn Schofield Clark, Young People and the Future of News, which won the 2018 Nancy Baym top book award from the Association of Internet Researchers and the 2018 James W. Carey Media Research Award.

Fall 2022 – Vol. 48. No. 1

We are pleased to introduce and welcome our two new board members:

Deena Gonzalez, Senior University Fellow and Professor of History, Gonzaga University, 2022-2023 Chair-Elect, and Jennifer Gómez Menjívar, Associate Professor, University of North Texas, At-large Representative. They join Maria Gonzalez, Roberto Hernandez, Chalane Lechuga, William Calvo, Francisco Villegas, Rob Unzueta, and Julia Curry as part of the 2022-223 NACCS Board. 

Professor Gonzalez, has been a member of NACS/NACCS since she was a graduate student at UC Berkeley.  Her contributions to the organization are countless and having elected Prof. Gonzalez as Chair-Elect and Chair of NACCS provides us not only experience in the organization but also in the academy.  

Prof. Gomez Menjivar was a student of Chicano Studies at CSUN under the mentorship of well known scholars and NACCS members like Rudy Acuna, Mary Pardo, and Marta Lopez-Garza.  The lessons learned in CSUN led her to take a leadership role in the Midwest Foco in 2018 and now looks forward to her At-Representative role in the NACCS Board. 

Please help welcome Deena and Jennifer. You can reach them at Deena@naccs.org or Jennifer@naccs.org

Roberto Hernández, NACCS Chair, 2021-2022

Estimad@s NACCistas,

As we approach the Spring equinox and for most a much necessary spring break, we want to relay a number of exciting news and important updates in advance of our upcoming NACCS Annual Meeting, which will be held virtually for a second year now on April 20-23, 2022. As you will read below, we have some announcements of recognition for a few our fellow CCS colegas and their respective accomplishments, as well as some reminders in preparation for the conference.

While we share the sentiment with many of you of wanting to be back in person pa’ compartir and convivir with each of you, platicar and theorize in the flesh, for the time being we say safety first, but with the hope that this time next year we will me making travel plans rather than balancing zoom meeting schedules. That being said, do not forget that although a much-reduced virtual rate, you still need to register for this year’s conference, and encourage others to register as well, as it is one of the few ways that we can continue to keep NACCS afloat during these difficult times. We know several of you have reached out about technical problems with registration and those have since been fixed.

With that, we honor those that we have lost in these three years since we were last together in Albuquerque, we give thanks to those seeds that they planted in each of us, we see and support all those beautiful cosechas emanating in and through the work you each do, and we nourish those new semillas and seedlings to come in the students and mentees of today.

See you en Zoomlandia soon

Spring 2022, No. 47 No. 1

We are proud to announce the winner of this year’s NACCS Book Award: Reading, Writing, and Revolution: Escuelitas and the Emergence of Mexican American Identity in Texas by Philis M. Barragán Goetz (University of Texas Press, 2020). The book unveils the complex history of Spanish-language community schools, or escuelitas, along the US-Mexico border of Texas and New Mexico. As Barragán Goetz explains, these escuelitas were more than just places for resisting hegemonic power(s) of forced assimilation and language control. They were also spaces of negotiation around the domains of race, cultural identity, dual citizenship, and epistemic self-determination. The book’s extensive archival work, detailed mastering of weaving oral history research, and critical genealogical analysis show the nuances implemented by these communities in their everyday engagement and negotiations with power, and the lack of it, around them. Moreover, as Barragán Goetz writes, the book is also “a story about empowered and educated women assuming leadership roles in historically patriarchal communities and a tale of how adults look to their children’s education to manage the problems of their own lives… [and] settled into the idea of becoming Mexican Americans” (3). Reading, Writing, and Revolution contextualizes the long history of struggles around the domains of language and schooling for our Raza, which connects the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to Tucson’s ending of Ethnic studies/Mexican American studies program in 2012 and can be extrapolated to the more recent attacks of Critical Race Theory. Barragán Goetz’s work is a beautiful well-writing research narrative of communities consistently adapting to the ever-shifting forces around them, a most read book. Philis M. Barragán Goetz is Assistant Professor of History at the Department of Communication, History, and Philosophy at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Congratulations!

Honorable Mentions

We also want to recognize two honorable mentions (finalists) for the NACCS Book Award this year. Intersectional Chicana Feminisms: Sitios y Lenguas by Aída Hurtado (University of Arizona Press) and La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Determination in Sacramento by Lorena V. Márquez (University of Arizona Press). They are significant contributions to the understanding of our field, both theoretical, empirical, and pragmatical. Following a long trajectory, Hurtado traces the intersectional nature of Chicana Feminists and again positions women’s experiences (and those around them) as a cornerstone to understanding the field and the more significant implications of oppression and emancipation. Her book weaves together theory and people’s own relationships, legacies, and genealogies to map a set of empowerment sitios where a new world is enacted every day. In La Gente, Lorena V. Márquez shows the emergence of the Chicana/o civil rights history in Sacramento and Northern California during the 1960-70s. However, as she explains, the Movimiento took place beyond the traditional players. It created a network of spaces to embrace everyday life, from school boards to canneries and the takeover of abandoned army posts. Thank you, both of you, for these fantastic books.

Indeed, selecting this year’s NACCS Book Award was an arduous but rewarding task. There were ten extraordinary books nominated. They all manifest a healthy and exciting picture of our Chicana and Chicano Studies field. More than ever, the relevance and importance of our work are evident. All the books were released in 2020 as the COVID 19 pandemic started to show the overwhelming impact on people of color, migrants, and poor communities in the United States and around the world. We were honored to read such beautiful testimonies of our communities’ consistent resiliency and work toward a more just, egalitarian, and diverse world. Thank you to all the nominations and our community of scholars, researchers, artists, cultural workers, and activists. It has been an honor and a pleasure.

2022 NACCS Book Award Selection Committee

Spring 2022, No. 47 No. 1

Leo Valdes is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Rutgers University. Their research spans carceral state history, trans studies, and labor history with a focus on the United States but with an attunement to international dynamics, particularly in the realm of migration and diaspora. An oral history practitioner and scholar-activist, their research is shaped by ongoing conversations and political projects in trans of color communities. Their article “In the Shadow of the Health-care City: Historicizing Trans Latinx Immigrant Experiences during the Coronavirus Pandemic” illustrates an approach to trans history that combines materialist analysis with trans/queer theory and is grounded in the knowledge trans people produce from their social location. Likewise, their dissertation merges disparate scholarly fields to examine the historical evolution of the Black and Brown trans past. Based in the New York metropolitan region and moving away from biomedical themes towards class and race, their dissertation offers a historical account and explanation for the emergence of a distinct trans politics inclusive of radical Black, anticolonial, and prison abolitionist traditions. Leo (also known as Lili), who is proudly trans and Latinx, among other identities, has published an article and reviews in the U.S. Latina and Latino Oral History Journal, The Metropole, and New Jersey Studies. 

Spring 2022, No. 47 No. 1

In the hopes of fostering proactive leadership for NACCS Caucuses and FOCOs, this year we are hosting a leadership meeting for all current and/or aspiring Caucus Chairs and FOCO Reps. The leadership meeting will be an opportunity to engage with current Board members, as well as to be updated on NACCS processes related to leadership expectations, submitting resolutions, accessing your FOCO and Caucus funds, among other questions you may have. The goal is to help ensure that we have smooth transitions between Reps, Caucus Chairs and Board members as well as create avenues for new leadership. It will be a brief onboarding session and Q&A.

Zoom link: https://SDSU.zoom.us/j/82162262542 

Spring 2022, No. 47 No. 1