Chicano/Latino Studies Program
The Chicano/Latino Studies Program is an interdisciplinary formation grounded in the decolonization and liberation projects of U.S. Latina/os and their allies in the civil rights movements of the 1960s that continue through the present for ethnic/racial, gender, class and sexual equality and freedom. Our courses on the U.S. Latina/o experience continue their historic mission of contributing to the production of truly universal knowledges about the United States and an increasingly interconnected world, broadening and deepening, beyond the limited provincialism of Eurocentric perspectives, the disciplinary offerings in the traditional fields of the humanities and social sciences. To achieve this we take seriously the knowledges, epistemologies and critical thinking produced by racially and sexually oppressed subjects.
We are primarily interested in providing knowledge about Latina/o history, creative production, and liberation movements as well as in forging the critical analysis of modern colonial and neo-colonial racialized and patriarchal society. Our main focus is on the perspectives and historical experiences of Latina/os.
We also continue a legacy of concern with other oppressed communities in the U.S., and other parts of the World from a global comparative perspective. Latino/as incorporate within its culture and experience many of the world-cultures and racialized experiences: Afro-Latinos, Indigenous Latinos, Arab-Latinos, Muslim, Latinos, Jewish Latinos, Korean Latinos, Chinese Latinos, Euro-Latinos, etc. We see this as potential decolonial political-ethical-epistemic bridge for coalition against racism, sexism, heterosexism and eurocentric knowledge production. Our aim is to examine the entangled intersectionality among sexuality, gender, class, race, ethnicity, language, epistemology and spirituality in complex socio-historical processes. We consider US Third World Feminist Thought, Queer Theory, Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies, and multiple theoretical approaches developed by people of color and Third World intellectuals as conceptual sources and not as objects of study. In that sense, our program is largely oriented by the concerns for social and epistemic decolonization in the United States, the Americas and the world at large.
Our program is interdisciplinary, with specialists in the social sciences, geography, history, literature, visual cultural studies, performance arts, public policy, education, health, theater, film, media, religion, and philosophy. In addition, we also offer practicum courses in creative writing, research methods, visual and performance arts and field studies/internship experience in various community organizations.
Through traditional and interdisciplinary approaches, our courses illuminate the various U.S. Latina/o experiences, such as the history of Mexican Americans in the 19th century southwest, the post-1965 Chicana/o and Nuyorican movements, multi-media Latina feminist thought, Latina/o visual and performance arts, historical and changing Latina/o migrations, including those of Central Americans in the 1980s, U.S. Latina/o religiosities, philosophies of resistance, and the broad struggles of the Global South.
Our courses are cross-listed with the Departments of Women's Studies; English; Art Practice; Art History; Dance, Theater and Performance; Religious Studies; Geography; Spanish and Portuguese; Social Welfare; and Education.
Core Faculty in Chicano/Latino Studies
- Ramón Grosfoguel, Associate Professor
- Beatriz Manz, Professor
Research interests: Latin America, peasantry, migrations, social movements, human rights, political/social/ethnic conflict.
- David Montejano, Professor
Ethnic Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies
Research interests: Comparative and Historical Sociology; Political Sociology; Social Change; Development; Race and Ethnic Relations; Community Studies; Ethnographic and Historical Methods
- Laura Elisa Pérez, Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies; Core Faculty, Doctoral Program in Performance Studies; Affiliated Faculty, Department of Women’s Studies and Center for Latin American Studies.
Research interests: Post-sixties U.S. Latina/o literary, visual, and performance arts; "U.S. women of color" (aka "third world") feminist and queer thought; art and spirituality; racialization and the cultural politics and economics of the artworld(s); cultural studies, post
- José David Saldívar, Professor, Departments of Ethnic Studies and English
Chicano/Latino Studies, Ethnic Studies,
Research interests: Literary history of the US ethnic novel; Trans-American literatures and cultural criticism; Cultural Studies; Chicano/a Literary Studies; Latin American literatures and criticism; Post-colonial analysis
- Alex M. Saragoza, Associate Professor
Research interests: Historical interface between processes of racialization and inequity in Latin America, especially Mexico and Cuba, and their intersections with immigration to the USA