American Cultural Memory Delivered Courtesy of U.S. Postal Service

The 1947 federal court case Mendez v. Westminster School District determined that the segregation of Mexican and Mexican American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional. Mendez v. Westminster set the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education. Brown v. Board of Education is generally credited with desegregating schools across the nation in the landmark 1954 decision that ruled that segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A new stamp memorializes the Mendez v. Westminster case sixty years after that momentous decision. Enhorabuena would be an exaggeration.

Curricular Inclusion and the Latina/o Body Politic

I was reminded this past week about how important it is for many Latina/o students to see themselves reflected in the social mirror the academy both reflects and refracts. After a symposium on The Futures of Latina/o Studies at Bryn Mawr College, and the American Studies Association Conference here in Philly, I'm reminded about a lesson I learned from Walter Benjamin's "The Author as Producer" on how institutions can "assimilate astonishing quantities of revolutionary themes," and the various performances thereof, without calling into question "the existence of the class that owns it [...]." The ASA theme this year was "América Aquí: Transhemispheric Visions and Community Connections" and, I must say, the quality of some of the sessions I attended was superb, even as the program guide elided accent marks, and the topics themselves registered diversity in the stacatto rhythms of monolingualism. So what happens when the conditions under which inclusion is granted rests on the contingencies associated with proper form? My own students are grappling with this question as they untangle local and administrative histories of what Doris Sommer, in another context, called the democratic drive of "slaps and embraces." Larger academic institutions are providing, wittingly or not, the template from which to register Latina/o inclusion in the curriculum and into the communities the academy seeks to represent. The UNC-Chapel Hill Undergraduate Minor in Latina/o Studies provides one such template. Please send others as I compile my list for Mujeres along with related possibilities for course offerings.

The Futures of Latina/o Studies: A Symposium on the Practices of Latinidad

(Photo: Keynote speaker Astrid Fellner of the University of Vienna)

from Bryn Mawr Now:

"Symposium on Latino Studies Brings Scholars From Around the World to Bryn Mawr"

Symposium Schedule

Panelists

Ocular Evidence: Race, Skin and the Student Body Politic

(Photo, Tierney Gearon for The New York Times)
New York Times Magazine, By DAVID LEONHARDT, "The New Affirmative Action"

Proposition 209, which outlawed "preferential" treatment based on color, race, ethnicity or national origin (The Latino Body, pg. 100), dealt a blow to what used to be known and "Affirmative Action." The UC system is fighting back.

Latina/o Literature's Futurity: A Dominican American Sci-Fi Writer?

Junot Díaz, THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO



We're reading Díaz's first novel in my Caribbean Encounters class; rarely do I find a work that's as fun to teach as it is satisfying. My cup is full. Read it? What do you think? So, Mr. Díaz, want to come to my class and talk about it?

Latina/o Literature and the "Canon Wars"

Incertus has a post on yesterday's Sunday Times Book Review essay on the "Canon Wars."

[...]"Latino/a Lit isn't doing its job if it isn't mentioning that "Latino/a people" is a set and a subset that overlaps with hundreds of other sets and subsets." [...]

The Short Life of José Antonio Gutiérrez

The Short Life of José Antonio Gutiérrez, a film by Swiss director Heidi Specogna,
premiered in Montreal this past Thursday. I saw it while at LASA.

Update: a colleague from Swarthmore told me recently that it was a terrible film. I think it's a cultural intervention, pointing the way to better popular renditions and imaginings of Latinidad. I think it's a start.