Chicano studies

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Chicano studies is an academic discipline. Like most branches of Ethnic studies, it incorporates aspects of various other disciplines, including history, sociology, psychology, and literary and textual analyses from the academic studies of the English and Spanish languages.

Most Chicano studies departments are at public universities in the Southwestern United States, particularly in California, although there are courses of study in Chicano studies at private and non-Southwestern colleges and universities. Some universities, particularly outside the Southwest, offer similar courses of study under the titles of Latino studies or Latin American Studies.

Some emphases in Chicano studies, are social change, identity, and borders. The Plan de Santa Bárbara the document that became the manifesto the educational aims of the Chicano Movement and a charter of the student activist group MEChA, emphasizes the need for Chicanos and Chicanas to use their educations to improve their communities when it proclaims that "man is never closer to his true self as when he is closer to his community". To this day, many Chicano studies departments maintain a strong commitment to campus and community activism.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Programs and departments 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Origins

Mexican Americans and other Hispanics have always studied themselves. Fray Angélico Chávez, who took a Hispano view of the history of New Mexico, George I. Sánchez, who analyzed sociological statistics pertaining to Hispanics, Américo Paredes, who compiled and rendered Mexican American folklore, Carey McWilliams, who documented the lives and struggles of Mexican Americans, Ernesto Galarza, who organized agricultural workers, and Bert Corona, who studied migration issues, were all pioneers in the field. But the study was not institutionalized except in a few diverse locations, such as the University of Notre Dame, where Julián Samora established the Mexican-American Studies Center in the early 1960s.

In 1967, a student group at the University of California, Berkeley began publishing El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought. At about the same time, students and faculty at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) began publishing Aztlán: A Chicano Journal of the Social Sciences and the Arts. These publications helped to give the budding field its intellectual footing.

Chicano studies programs and departments were born of struggle. The first, developed at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) in 1968 at the height of the Chicano student movement that spawned the Chicano Blowouts, (a massive student boycott to protest unfair conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District schools), was as much a response to the social circumstances of Los Angeles-area Mexican Americans as it was a demand of the activist community. Other programs followed, usually after intense battles between students and administration, at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in 1969, the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 1971, and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 1970 with Felipe de Ortego y Gasca as Founding Director.

By the mid-1970s, Chicana feminists came to challenge the masculine domination of the field, making gender issues central to the concerns of the academic community. Chicana/Latina Studies is a journal dedicated to Chicana studies, which is seen as a sub- or co-discipline of Chicano studies that concentrates on the history, roles, and concerns of women. Important scholars of Chicana studies include Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Chela Sandoval, Vicki L. Ruiz, and Betita Martinez.

Chicana/o student activism resurged in the early 1990's when UCLA's MEChA Chapter protested an attempt by the UCLA Administration to eliminate the Chicano Studies Program. Instead, after a 3 year struggle, which involved the support of the The United Community and Labor Alliance (also U.C.L.A.-a take on the campus name and consisting of Mexican American activists and community leaders) and a student hunger strike in 1993, UCLA established a Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana/o Studies. This center was later changed to a full fledged campus department in 2004.

Other important scholars include Juan Gomez-Quinones, Jose Limon, Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Rodolfo Acuña, Charles Truxillo, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Norma Elia Cantú, and Armando Navarro.

[edit] Programs and departments

Some universities have departments of Chicano studies, which is also referred to as "Mexican American studies", "Chicano and Chicana studies", "Chicano/a studies", and "Chican@ studies", while others offer programs and courses in Chicano studies as parts of other departments.

• Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Arizona State University
• Chicano Studies, California State University, Bakersfield
• Department of Chicano/Chicana Studies, California State University, Dominguez Hills
• Chicana and Chicano Studies Program, California State University, Fullerton
• Department of Chicano Studies, CSULA
• Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, CSUN
• Chicano Studies, Claremont McKenna College
• Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Loyola Marymount University
• Department of Chicana & Chicano Studies, San Diego State University
• Chicano Studies, Scripps College
• Chicana and Chicano Studies major, Stanford University
• Chicano Studies, UC Berkeley
• Chicana/o Studies Program, University of California, Davis
• Department of Chicana & Chicano studies and César E. Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Education and Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA
• Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Center for Chicano Studies, UCSB
• Department of Chicano Studies, University of Minnesota
• Chicano Hispano Mexicano Studies, University of New Mexico
• Center for Mexican-American Studies, University of Texas at Austin
• Chicana/o Studies, University of Texas at El Paso
• Chicano Studies, University of Washington
• Chican@ and Latin@ Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Chicano Studies Program, University of Wyoming
• Department of Mexican American Studies, San Jose State University

[edit] See also

• Asian American studies
• Black studies
• Gender studies
• Latino studies
• Native American studies

[edit] References

This article does not cite any references or sources. (October 2006) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9305/0185.html http://www.chavez.ucla.edu/2history.htm

[edit] External links

• National Association for Chicana and Chicano studies
• Tomás Rivera Policy Institute

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