Faculty Research Grants Recipients
2005-2006
Angie Chabram-Dernersesian
Professor Chicana/o Studies
“Cultural Representations of Chicana Latina Anxiety Disorder.” This research identifies and examines ethnically specific, gender specific Chicana/Latina narrative constructions of the anxious body and the relevant social contexts and healing practices that inscribe psychosocial dynamics. Funds were allocated for travel to Los Angeles to conduct archival research at UC Los Angeles and for research assistance support.
Desirée Martín
Assistant Professor, English Department
“Bordered Saints: Possessing Border and Nation in Chicana/o and Mexican Culture.” Funds were allocated for travel to conduct archival work in Mexico at the Archivo Historico del Estado de Sonora. This research examines Chicana/o iconography such as that of Teresa Urrea, Pancho Villa and Jesús Malvarde” theoretical formations of Mexican and Chicano nationalism, and popular resistance to (or transcendence) of the nation-state.
Luz Mena, Assistant Professor
Women and Gender Studies
“Free Black Women in Havana of the 1830s and 1840s.” Funds were allocated for travel to conduct archival work in Cuba at the Archivo Nacional de Cuba. This research examines the role of race and gender in spatial transformations of Havana during the 1830s and 1840s. This work also seeks to understand how free black women, through everyday practices, shaped early modern Havana and the parallels to the political experience of Latina populations in the United States.
2004-2005
Sergio de la Mora
Associate Professor, Chicana/o Studies
“La Tequilera: Lucha Reyes, Ranchera Music, and Neo-Mexico Cultural Identity.” Funds were allocated for travel to conduct interviews and archival research in Los Angeles and Mexico City. This historical recovery project expands the official history of Mexican popular music by highlighting how Reyes´s queer lifestyle and performance style facilitated the emergence of an urban queer subculture in Mexico City that shaped rancheria music and Mexicanidad. This work has been presented at Cornell University, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and at the University of California, Davis.
Desirée Martín
Assistant Professor, English Department
“Bordered Saints.” Funds were allocated for travel to conduct archival work in Mexico and Arizona. This research examines Chicana iconography such as that of Teresa Urrea, the “Saint of Cabora” and the inspiration for a peasant rebellion in northern Mexico in the 1890s and the way it challenges linear temporality of the border in U.S based border studies and theory. Dr. Martín will be presenting excerpts of her work “Bordered Saints” at UC Davis´s Cultural Studies Graduate Group Fall 2005 Colloquium Series on November 10, 2005.
Robert Irwin
Associate Professor, Spanish Department
“The Other Borderlands: Cultural Icons of Mexico´s Northwestern Frontier, 1848-1910.” Funds were allocated for travel to Arizona to conduct archival work. This research contributes to “border studies” by focusing on the Mexican side that highlights imperialism, race relations, the importance of autonomous indigenous groups (Seris, Yaquis, Mayos) to late 19th century borderlands history and migration. This project is currently under publishing contract by the University of Minnesota Press.
Cindy Kam
Assistant Professor of Political Science and Elizabeth Zechmeister, Assistant Professor of Political Science
“Gender and Political Participation Among Mexican-Americans, Mexicans, and Non-Hispanic Whites.” Funds were allocated for graduate research assistance, statistical software, duplication costs, and travel for graduate students to the Political Science Association. This collaborative research project focuses on the ways gender and ethnicity structure the pathways to political participation among Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and non-Hispanic whites in the United States by utilizing statistical analysis of the gender bases of political participation among these populations.
2003-2004
Beatriz Pesquera
Associate Professor, Chicana/o Studies
“P´uhrépecha Migration: Gender, Ethnicity and Cultural Citizenship.” Funds were allocated for travel to conduct interviews with P´uhrépecha/ Tarasco workers in Fresno, California, and with the directors of the Centro P´urépecha and the Centro Indigenista in Cheran, Michoacan, and to conduct library research at the Colegio de México in Zamora, Michoacan. These funds primarily went toward the mentorship of two undergraduate research assistants: Alejandra Medina, who will be completing her honor´s thesis on P´uhrépecha migration, and Lucia Rodriguez, who will be writing a response to Ruben Martinez´ Crossing Over, as part of her application to a master´s program in journalism. Prof. Pesquera presented her work on this project at the national MALCS conference in Seattle, in August 2004.
2002-2003
Angie Chabram-Dernersesian
Professor, Chicana/o Studies
“Chicana Feminist Sleuths: A Dramatic Reading and Digital Production of Lucha Corpi´s Cactus Blood.” Funds were allocated for the initial production stages of a series of audiovisual cassettes and digital media on Chicana mystery novelist Lucha Corpi´s Cactus Blood. This series will be a prototype for further audiovisual series featuring readings and dramatizations of the works of Chicana feminist detective novelists, with the intention of making available to a broader public the alternative, grassroots intellectual and cultural contexts contained within them.
Yvette Flores-Ortiz
Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies
“Intimate Partner Violence Among Mexicanas in Woodland.” Funds were allocated for the hiring of an undergraduate research assistant to set up interviews, manage data files, and conduct selected interviews to help complete the qualitative phase of this study, which will yield in-depth information about how immigrant Mexican women define violence, how they cope with the experience, and how migration has affected their lives. Flores-Ortiz has identified differences in the ways that Mexicanas and US-born women define violence, and therefore the information yielded from study is crucial to the design of treatment programs.
Sergio de la Mora
Assistant Professor of Chicana/o Studies
“Screening Sex Work and Sexual Violence in Recent Mexican Films.” Funds were allocated for travel to Mexico City to conduct archival work and interviews for this interdisciplinary project that involves historical and textual analyses of five Mexican films released in the past four years. This research examines how these films are challenging and reinscribing film conventions and popular discourses about gender, sexuality, and violence. Funds also covered research expenses, and the hiring of an undergraduate research assistant.
2001-2002
Beatriz M. Pesquera
Professor, Chicana/o Studies
“Malinche Speaks: Chicana Feminist Discourse and Other Heresies for Empowerment.” Funds were allocated for the transcription of in-depth interviews with Chicana academics, central to the book, allowing Dr. Pesquera and her collaborator Denise Segura, Ph.D. to make considerable progress on their manuscript.
Lorena Oropeza
Assistant Professor, Chicana/o Studies
Raza Si! Guerra No!: Chicana/o Patriotism and Protest during the Vietnam War Era
Funds were provided for the travel of to Los Angeles to conduct oral history interviews with Chicana activists who were essential behind the scenes in the National Chicano Moratorium against the war in Vietnam. Professor Oropeza demonstrates that the significance of the Chicano Movement rested in its broadening of narrow conceptions of American citizenship to which earlier generations had clung.
1999-2000
Yvette Flores-Ortiz
Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies
“The Relationship Between Bicultural Competence and Academic Resilience in Latinas/os.” This was a collaborative project with Ph.D Candidate Rosalva Vargas-Reighley from Human Development. Funds were allocated for the training of the undergraduate R.A´s., the development of research methodologies, completion of data collection for phases 1 and 2 of the research project, and for travel out of state to present the research findings and to promote the C/LRC.
Rosa Linda Fregoso
Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies
“Growing Up TexMex: Latina Cultural and Political Representation.” Funds were allocated for research related travel expenses to the American History Archives at University of Texas at Austin. Professor Fregoso´s results include the completion of a chapter on the documentary photography of Russell Lee, which will be published in a book-length manuscript.
Lorena Oropeza
Assistant Professor, Chicana/o Studies
Raza Si! Guerra No!: Chicana/o Patriotism and Protest during the Vietnam War Era
Funds were provided for the travel of to Texas and New Mexico to conduct oral history interviews with Chicana activists. Professor Oropeza has signed a contract to publish this work in a book in 2001.
Francisca E. Gonzalez
Ph.D, Office of the President Fellow, UC Davis
Travel funds were allocated to Dr. Gonzalez to present a paper at NACCS in Portland, Oregon in March 2000.