UCLA Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies

Professor Gaspar de Alba Retirement Symposium
2026-02-26 09:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Northwest Campus Auditorium, 350 De Neve Dr., Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1559, United States
RSVP Link
Please join us for a celebration of Profe Gaspar De Alba’s incredible career and lasting legacy at UCLA. Let’s celebrate her research and impact!
Hosted by the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities in partnership with the Dean of Social Sciences and the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, “Queering Sor Juana” will include two panels and a showcase performance of arias from the opera JUANA, which is based on Gaspar de Alba’s historical novel, Sor Juana’s Second Dream. The opera premiered with Opera UCLA in 2019, with two sold-out performances and a glowing review in The Los Angeles Times.
Free and open to the public, but all attendees must register online. Lunch and reception will be provided for the participants and first 50 registered guests only.
“Otro Corazón 3: Queering Sor Juana” builds on past symposia organized by Alicia Gaspar de Alba in her “Corazón” series,1 and is offered as part of a year-long celebration of her 32-year academic career at UCLA, focusing on her lifetime of research and creative engagement with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 17th-century Mexican nun/poet/scholar who is hailed all over the world as the “first feminist of the Americas” and the Mexican “Tenth Muse.”

Book Talk: How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America
2025-11-19 11:00
Date: November 19, 2025
Time: 11:oo AM in Pacific Time
RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/bahai-moreno

How do schools make us think about race? And where does Latinx fit in? In “How Schools Make Race,” Laura Chávez-Moreno, a researcher and former public school teacher, shows how schools play a pivotal role in shaping the concept of race and racialized groups. In this talk, she tells the story of how the teachers and students in a racially diverse Spanish-English bilingual education program grappled with conflicting ideas about race and about the Latinx category. Chávez-Moreno challenges us to reconsider what makes race and invites us to see Latinx as a racialized group. Her research reveals why this shift matters-–because how we think about race affects whether our schools can provide youth with an education that challenges racist ideas.

SPEAKER:

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno
Assistant Professor, Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies, and Department of Education at UCLA

Laura Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning scholar, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and the Department of Education at UCLA. She is the author of How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America, published by Harvard Education Press, which won the Book of the Year Award by an early career scholar from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. Her book has been featured in several podcasts and popular media, including the New Books Network and Ms. Magazine. Professor Chávez-Moreno’s research has been published in top-tier academic journals and recognized with prestigious awards from organizations such as the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. In 2023, she received the Alan C. Purves Award from the National Council of Teachers of English for her article, “The continuum of racial literacies: Teacher practices countering whitestream bilingual education,” published in Research in the Teaching of English. This annual award honors the article deemed most significant in advancing the field. Most recently, Professor Chávez-Moreno was awarded the 2025 Emerging Scholars Award from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association. For more about her work, please check out her website LauraChavezMoreno.com

2026 CCAS Ph.D. Admission Information Session
2025-11-12 16:00 - 17:00
The Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies is presenting an Admission Information Session for the Ph.D. program. Please help us by sharing our flyer with anyone interested in applying to the Ph.D. Program.

During the Ph.D. information session, we will discuss the admission process and program requirements, and we will answer any questions. Please RSVP using the links provided.

[Symposium] Archival Futures: The Ephemera of Art, Mobility and the Isthmus
2025-05-20 08:15 - 18:00 | Hershey Hall, 801 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA invites you to the symposium Archival Futures: The Ephemera of Art, Mobility and the Isthmus. This day-long event will feature scholars, community archivists, artists and intellectuals based in Los Angeles and abroad to deeply engage the archives as those produced and looked after by Central American peoples subjected to historical negation. We ask, in what ways do organic intellectuals, scholarly dissidents, and artists subvert “official archives?” How do they refuse the gaze of violence present in these ephemera and in the future archive? Join us as we create a space of critical and horizontal exchange rooted in many knowledges that exist and make the isthmus, an isthmus that is mobile, that defies ecological collapse, and builds creative worlds of survivance and continuity.
Date: Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Location: Room 158, Hershey Hall Salon (in-person only)
Time: 8:15am-6pm
Lunch & Dinner provided with RSVP at: https://bit.ly/archivalfuture
Art & Archival Exhibit in Hershey Courtyard

Book Talk: Dr. Christopher Loperena Presents "The End of Paradise"
2025-02-26 11:00 - 13:00
Book Talk: Dr. Christopher Loperena Presents “The End of Paradise”

Date: Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Time: 11:00am to 1:00pm

Place: CSRC Library – 144 Haines Hall

Christopher Loperena is Associate Professor in the Ph.D. Program in Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research examines Indigenous and Black territorial struggles, land, extractivism, and the socio-spatial politics of economic development. He has also published on anthropological witnessing and cultural expertise. His book, The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras, is with Stanford University Press. His work has appeared in journals such as American Anthropologist, American Quarterly, Cultural Anthropology, Current Anthropology, Geoforum, and the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.
Description:
The future of Honduras begins and ends on the white sand beaches of Tela Bay on the country’s northeastern coast where Garifuna, a Black Indigenous people, have resided for over two hundred years. In The Ends of Paradise, Christopher Loperena examines the Garifuna struggle for life and collective autonomy, and demonstrates how this struggle challenges concerted efforts by the state and multilateral institutions to render both their lands and their culture into fungible tourism products. He reveals how purportedly inclusive tourism projects form part of a larger neoliberal, extractivist development regime, which remakes Black and Indigenous territories into frontiers of progress for the mestizo majority.

Book Talk: Laura Chávez-Moreno Presents "How Schools Make Race"
2024-11-19 11:00 - 13:00
Book Talk: Laura Chávez-Moreno Presents “How Schools Make Race”

Event Date:

Tuesday, November 19, 2024 –
11:00am to 1:00pm

Event Location:

CSRC Library – 144 Haines Hall

Laura Chávez-Moreno, assistant professor in the departments of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Education, will present her new book examining the pivotal role schools play in shaping concepts of race and Latinidad. How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America (Harvard Education Press, 2024) explores how curriculum, pedagogy, policy, and language interact to define, reinforce, and blur these boundaries, urging us to rethink our understanding of race and recognize Latinx as a racialized groupChavezMoreno-UCLA BookTalk Flyer updated (1)
Discussants:
Dr. Daniel Solórzano and Dr. Celia Lacayo
Moderator:
Dr. Inma García-Sánchez

Please RSVP if you wish to attend a provided lunch.

Dia de Los Muertos- November 3, 2024 at 5pm
2024-11-03 17:00 - 20:30
Join us on November 3rd, from 5:00-8:30 pm, for Dia De Los Muertos. Guided by Professor Martha Ramirez-Oropeza.
Location: 685 N Venice Blvd, Venice, CA, 90291

UCLA CCAS Ph.D. Admission Information Sessions - October 30 and November 4th
2024-10-30 09:30 - 2024-11-04 15:00
The Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies is presenting two remote Admission Information Sessions on the Ph.D. program.
During the Ph.D. information session, we will discuss the admission process and program requirements. Please RSVP using the links provided.
2025 CCAS Ph.D. Admissions Information Sessions
Date: Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Time 9:30 am -11:00am
ZOOM RSVP: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwsduyqpzgjG9XCZajGm686f-wJRWjaRRRy
Date : Monday, November 4, 2024
Time : 3:00 pm-4:30 pm
ZOOM RSVP https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwkc-msrjguH9DTB2csoSGjrLepJI5hMvpt
Admissions Deadlines for Fall 2025: December 1, 2024
Admission Requirements Website: https://grad.ucla.edu/programs/social-sciences/chicana-o-and-central-american-studies-department/chicana-and-chicano-studies/#admission-requirements
For any questions, please email Janeth Ruvalcaba, the Graduate Advisor, at janeth@chavez.ucla.edu

Gallery Talk: Patrick A. Polk and Charlene Villaseñor Black
2024-10-25 17:30 - 19:30
IN PERSON- RSVP, please click here
The Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies is pleased to co-sponsor a gallery talk at the Fowler Museum featuring Professor of Art History and Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Associate Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center Charlene Villaseñor Black and Lilly Endowment Curator of Art and Religion Patrick A. Polk. Illuminating commentary on the exhibition Descanse en Paz: Memorial Paintings from 19th-Century Mexico will be paired with light refreshments in the courtyard.
This exhibition highlights two popular genres of 19th-century Mexican painting commemorating family members who no longer reside in the household— offering them a lasting presence in the home. The first intimately portrays deceased individuals in likenesses imbued with grief and tender remembrance. The subjects—often children—are shown full of life: some appear with toys in hand; others rest in peace (descanse en paz). The second genre is the uniquely Mexican monja coronada or “crowned nun” portrait. Images of flower-adorned “Brides of Christ” were commissioned by the families of women who took Catholic ecclesiastical vows and permanently embarked on cloistered lives.
The event will take place on Friday, October 25 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. All are welcome to attend. For more information and to RSVP, please click here. To visit this event’s page, please click here.

CCAS Talk by Dr. Francisco J. Galarte: "Dolorous Gender"
2024-04-22 14:00 - 15:30
We cordially invite you to a CCAS Talk by Dr. Francisco J. Galarte:
Title: “Dolorous Gender”
Abstract: This lecture builds upon the work in Brown Transfiguration: Rethinking Race, Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies by proposing the affect of dolor as a conceptual framework for analyzing and theorizing the psycho-sexual affective registers of racialized femininities and masculinities. While demonstrating the connections between trans studies and Chicanx/Latinx studies, the talk focuses on the lives of trans feminine sex workers on the Juárez/El Paso Border before NAFTA and the dolorous imprints these women have left upon how we understand the region’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1990s, via border policing, feminicide and urban renewal. The photographic work of Mexican artist Teresa Margolles provides a dolorous point of entry for excavating a history of trans-feminization on the border by both the US and Mexican nation states, as well as the extractive colonial imaginings of feminist researchers.
Biography: Francisco J. Galarte is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Director of the Feminist Research Institute at the University of New Mexico, and currently serves as the executive editor of the journal TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (Duke Univ Press). He is the author of Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies (University of Texas Press, 2021), which was awarded the Allan Bray Memorial Book Prize, by the MLA GL/Q Caucus (2022), the John Leo and Dana Heller Award by the Popular Culture Association (2022), and the Book of the Year Award by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (2022). Most recently, he has begun working on a second book project tentatively entitled, Dolorous Gender: The Problem of Chicanx/Latinx Femininities and Masculinities.
Date: Monday, April 22th, 2024
Time: 2:00 – 3:30 pm
Location: Haines Hall, 144

2024 Patricia McCarron McGinn Lecture by Charlene Villaseñor Black
2024-03-04 16:00 - 17:00 | Optimist Room, Luskin Conference Center
You are cordially invited to the UCLA Art History Department’s annual Patricia McCarron McGinn Lecture featuring Charlene Villaseñor Black, Professor of Art History and Chair of the Chicana/o and Central American Studies Department at UCLA.

Professor Villaseñor Black will present her talk entitled “Art against Necropolitics” on Monday, March 4 at 5 PM in the Optimist Room of the Luskin Conference Center.

This is an in-person event that you won’t want to miss!

Kindly RSVP by Wednesday, February 21 to attend. CLICK HERE TO RSVP .

CCAS Talk by Cynthia Vázquez: "We Start at Dusk:" Peon Playing and the (Re)connect of Kumeyaay Transborder Sovereignties on the U.S./Mexico Border Copy
2023-12-05 15:30 - 17:00 | Kaplan Hall, A48
We cordially invite you to a CCAS Talk by Cynthia Vázquez:
Title: “We Start at Dusk:” Peon Playing and the (Re)connect of Kumeyaay Transborder Sovereignties on the U.S./Mexico Border
Abstract: The U.S./Mexico border serves as a buffer zone where various state-level legalities are enforced, and it is constantly under surveillance by the U.S. and Mexico governments. Today, state-sponsored surveillance and border settler-colonialities operate in tandem to dispossess tribal nations whose traditional lands overlap multiple settler borders. For the Kumeyaay nation, whose traditional homelands straddle the San Diego-Tijuana region, and whose migratory cycles have been intertwined with generations of knowledge exchange, the border has ruptured their sense of nationhood. Presently, Kumeyaay in Mexico are seeking to reconnect with their counterparts in the U.S. through the reclamation and revitalization of the ancestral game of Peon. Playing Peon is connected to larger questions surrounding language reclamation efforts and Indigenous sovereignties in California and Baja California. How do border tribes assert their sovereignty amid increasing restrictive border policies? How do the Kumeyaay reclaim a game that has been dormant for more than 60 years? This talk will highlight grassroots efforts to reclaim Peon on both sides of the border, transborder reconnections, and the processes in reclaiming Peon. The larger scope of this talk will focus on how Indigenous sovereignties are implemented and practiced on the border historically and presently based off of my ten year community and tribally approved based research.
Biography: Dr. Vazquez is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA. She received her doctorate from UC San Diego in Ethnic Studies with a graduate specialization in Critical Gender Studies. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar in humanities and social sciences, her research is situated at the nexus of critical theories of Indigenous transborder migrations, Indigeneity, settler-colonialism, binational schooling, Indigenous & border epistemologies, and Latinidad. Her pronouns are she/her/hers. Born in LA, brought up in Las Vegas, she’s called San Diego her home for ten years. Cynthia identifies as Xicana and is deeply involved in relationship making with artists and local tribal community based on land pedagogies, liberatory practices, and resistance.
Date: Tuesday, December 5th, 2023
Time: 3:30 – 5:00 pm
Location: Kaplan Hall, A48

Artist Talk: Joey Terrill
2023-11-28 19:30 - 20:30 | Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, United States
We cordially invite you to Artist Talk: Joey Terrill! Artist and retired Director of Global Advocacy & Partnerships for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Joey Terrill, speaks about his life’s work as an artist and activists focusing on issues facing queer Chicano communities in Los Angeles and beyond.
Date: Tuesday, November 28th, 2023
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Boulevard,
Los Angeles, CA 90024
For more information, click the following link: Artist Talk: Joey Terrill.

Oceanic Studies Book Forum
2023-11-15 12:00 - 13:30 | UCLA James West Alumni Center, 325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
We cordially invite you to the Oceanic Studies Book Forum with invited guests: Alfred Flores (Harvey Mudd College) & Christen Sasaki (UC San Diego). Moderated by Genevieve Carpio, Associate Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies.
Date: Wednesday, November 15th, 2023
Time: 12:00 am – 1:30 pm
Location: UCLA James West Alumni Center – Founders Room
325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Please click the link to RSVP. Don’t miss on your chance to attend this exciting book forum!

Dia De Los Muertos
2023-11-05 16:00 - 20:30 | 685 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Hello CCAS community members,
We cordially invite you to Dia De Los Muertos! Guided by Professor Martha Ramirez-Oropeza with over 230 students.
Date: Sunday, November 5th, 2023
Time: 4:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Location: 685 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

The Inaugural Afro-Isthmus Symposium
2023-11-02 09:00 - 17:00 | Collins Room Alumni Center (UCLA) 325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, 325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
We cordially invite you to the Inaugural Afro-Isthmus Symposium with invited guests: Marielba Herrera (ES) & Heriberto Erquicia (ES).
Date: Thursday, November 2th, 2023
Time: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Location: Collins Room Alumni Center (UCLA)
325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Lunch and light refreshments will be provided for symposium and mixer attendees. The closest parking for guests is UCLA Structure 8.
Please click the link to RSVP. Capacity is set at 60 attendees, don’t miss on your chance to attend this great symposium!

2023 CCAS OPEN HOUSE
2023-09-27 13:30 - 15:00 | Bunche Hall, 11282 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1559, United States
Hello new and continuing students and community members,
We cordially invite you to the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies Open House! We are having our Open House in person, in front of UCLA Bunche Hall elevators, on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, from 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm.
Please join us and bring your friends. You will meet our department faculty, graduate students, TAs, and network with students in the major and minor! If interested in adding the major or minor(s), meet with Ellie, our phenomenal undergraduate advisor.
Pizza and refreshments will be provided! Join us for an evening of networking, music, and more!
If you have any questions, please contact our undergraduate student advisor “Ellie” Hernandez at studentadvisor@chavez.ucla.edu.
The deadline to RSVP for yourself or to table as part of a Student Organization is Friday, September 22.
RSVP CLICK HERE
Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Time: 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm
Location: Bunche Hall South Patio (by the elevators)

2023 CCAS Commencement Pictures
2023-06-17 08:00 - 17:00
Click on this link to view the 2023 Commencement Pictures.

PH.D GRADUATE ALUM JACK CARAVES presents for The Department of Gender Studies
2023-03-13 15:30 - 17:00 | YRL Presentation Room
PH.D GRADUATE JACK CARAVES presents for The Department of Gender Studies

Trans*Formative Spirituality in Trans Latinx Lives: Cultivating Spirituality, Resistance, and Hope on the Path of Becoming
Monday, March 13th
3:30-5pm
YRL Presentation Room
Description: Drawing on life history interviews and survey data with trans Latinx adults in Los Angeles, this talk examines how trans Latinx immigrants experience multiple forms of structural, legal, and interpersonal violence and antagonism throughout their lives. I focus on the importance of spirituality in trans Latinx lives and the connection, healing, self-determination, and self-actualization it provides amidst a society that marks them undesirable and disposable. Focusing on spirituality, I theorize the concept of “trans*formative spirituality” as a way of “doing” spirituality and “being” spiritual that occurs through the process of disidentification from family, religious, and cultural identity–and is informed by trans Latinx embodiment and consciousness. Moreover, Trans*Formative spirituality captures the internal and external transformations trans Latinxs go through as they engage in the labor of becoming.
Bio: Jack Cáraves (he/him/they/them) is a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at UC Riverside. Previously, he was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Latina/o Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an Assistant Professor of WGSS and Sociology at San José State University. He holds a PhD in Chicana and Chicano Studies from UCLA. He received his B.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies and Politics at UC Santa Cruz.
Jack is an interdisciplinary trans feminist activist scholar and specializes in Latinx gender and sexuality studies. His research examines the role of gender variance, trans embodiment, and sexuality in shaping migration, family dynamics, identity formation, spirituality, and world-making for transgender Latinxs in Los Angeles. His work in the trans Latinx community began through a community-based participatory research project with the TransLatin@ Coalition that focused on the holistic health needs of trans Latinxs in southern California. Jack is currently working on his first book, Trans Power: Illegality, Identity Formation, and Spirituality in Trans Latinx Lives, which is under contract with Duke University Press.
Jack is also co-creater and co-host of the podcast, Anzaldúing It, along with Dr. Angélica Becerra—a podcast grounded in Chicana and Women of Color Feminisms and dedicated to navigating the borderlands of queer and trans Latinidad. With over half a million listens, the podcast has been used as a teaching tool for underrepresented students and has been featured on Hiplatina, Autostraddle, PRIDE.com, GOMAG, and was featured in the 2019 Google Youth Tech Summit.
Jack’s works has been published in The International Journal of Qualitative Methods in Education, Latino Studies, The Journal of LGBT Youth, the Association for Mexican American Educators Journal, Transgender Studies Quarterly and in the anthology: Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention and Deportation.

Info Session for the Central American Studies Minor
2023-02-13 13:00 - 14:00 | 7386 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Mark your calendar and let your friends know that we will be having an Info Session to inform students about the requirements for our Central American Studies minor on Monday, February 13 from 1:00-2:00 pm either in person in Bunche 7386 and via zoom https://ucla.zoom.us/j/3803275880 If you or your friends are looking for a minor, the CAS will be a great minor to add to your academic path–even if you already have an academic minor, find out how you can add an extra minor or maybe a third one!!
We encourage you to attend and mingle with our faculty. We will be having delicious refreshments (first come, first served) for the students who attend in person.
Attend in person: Bunche 7386 or via zoom https://ucla.zoom.us/j/3803275880
Click here to download the Central American Studies Minor Checklist

Virtual Book Talk: Border Women & the Community of Maclovio Rojas
2022-02-04 11:00 - 12:30 | https://ucla.zoom.us/j/93923639766?pwd=[REDACTED]
Join us for a virtual book talk with Dr. Michelle Téllez on Friday, February 4th from 11:00am – 12:30pm. This event is sponsored by the UCLA Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and the Center for Mexican Studies.

Dr. Michelle Téllez is Associate Professor of Mexican American Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Arizona. Her scholarly and community-engaged work has been deeply shaped by the experience of growing up along the U.S./Mexico border. Her writings on transnational community formations(and disruptions), Chicana mothering, and gendered migration can be found innumerous anthologies and journals including Gender & Society, Feminist Formations, and Aztlán. Her latest book, Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect was published in September 2021 by the University of Arizona Press.

MEETING ID : 939 2363 9766 | PASSCODE: [REDACTED]

Please contact cs.gradrep@gmail.com or maylei@ucla.edu with any questions.

IAC Fall Forum
2021-11-09 15:00 - 16:00
IAC Fall Forum featuring guest speakers.
UCLA Institute of American Cultures
When: Tuesday, November 9, 2021, 3–4 PM (PST)IAC Fall Forum 2021_Depts flyer[47][88]
RSVP link: https://uclaea.zoom.us/webinar/register/5816343257350/WN_k2pSc104RciBB2KmU1jaJw

Día de los Muertos: Love and Loss During the COVID-19 Pandemic
2021-11-01 11:00 - 12:00
You are invited to an online event honoring our ancestors and acknowledging the devastating losses the Latinx and other racialized communities have endured during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
This reflective event will feature artwork, performances, and critical analyses by faculty, students, and community members.
Open to the public!
Register here:
https://bit.ly/2XqWpCP

Virtual Day of the Dead Ritual
2021-10-31 12:00 - 14:00 | https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94635242184
Join us for an invocation to the four directions and calling of the spirits collective ofrenda guided by Prof. Martha Ramirez- Oropeza.

My mother, the painter: Storytelling in Central American Studies
2021-10-21 13:00 - 14:30
Please join us for the first meeting of the Fall 2021 Race, Ethnicity and Immigration Colloquium, presented by IGS and co-sponsored by the Center for Race & Gender at UC Berkeley. Professor Leisy J. Abrego (UCLA) will give a talk titled “My mother, the painter: Storytelling in Central American Studies.”
For more information on the event: My mother, the painter: Storytelling in Central American Studies | Institute of Governmental Studies – UC Berkeley
This event is virtual and is open to all members of the community. Zoom webinar registration is required. (You must have a Zoom account in order to attend.)
Zoom registration: Webinar Registration – Zoom

Note: This event is not hosted by UCLA’s Chicano & Central American Studies Department ―One of our department faculty, Leisy J. Abrego, is being featured. If you have questions about this event, please contact the organizer, Christian Paiz for more information (christian.paiz@berkeley.edu).

2021 Virtual Commencement
2021-06-12 10:00
Join us for the CCAS 2021 Virtual Commencement! The commencement webpage will go live at 10:00 am PT on Saturday, June 12. This is a pre-recorded event.

José M. Alamillo presents Deportes: The Making of a Sporting Mexican Diaspora
2021-05-12 15:00 - 16:00
Book Talk: José M. Alamillo presents Deportes: The Making of a Sporting Mexican Diaspora
Please join us online when José M. Alamillo, professor and chair of the Chicana/o Studies Department at CSU Channel Islands, presents his new book, Deportes: The Making of a Sporting Mexican Diaspora (Rutgers University Press, 2021). Spanning the first half of the twentieth century, Deportes uncovers the hidden experiences of Mexican male and female athletes, teams and leagues and their supporters who fought for a more level playing field on both sides of the border. Despite a widespread belief that Mexicans shunned physical exercise, teamwork or “good sportsmanship,” they proved that they could compete in a wide variety of sports at amateur, semiprofessional, Olympic and professional levels. Professor Alamillo will be introduced by Genevieve Carpio, Assistant Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA; Rudy Mondragón, doctoral candidate in Chicana/o and Central American studies at UCLA, will moderate the Q&A.
Alamillo was the 2002-2003 Institute of American Cultures visiting scholar at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, where he first started researching sports history. He taught the first Chicanx sports history class at UCLA, “Race, Sport & Recreation in Chicana/o Los Angeles,” in Spring 2003.
This event is organized by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and co-sponsored by the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, the Department of History, and the Center for Mexican Studies. This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jose-m-alamillo-deportes-the-making-of-a-sporting-mexican-diaspora-tickets-152154069919
A Zoom link will be sent to registrants the day before the event. This webinar will be recorded.

Archival Methodologies from an Ethnic Studies Perspective
2021-05-07 10:00 - 11:30
Lonches con CCAS
Dear CCAS cohorts and faculty,
Please join us for a roundtable exploring history, archiving practices, and training in these fields from some of UCLA’s leading scholars, librarians, & graduate students.
The panel will include Dr. Rosie Bermuduez (UC President’s Post-Doctoral Fellow), Dr. Marques Vestal (Assistant Professor, Urban Planning), Dr. Genevieve Carpio (Assistant Professor, CCAS), Xaviera Flores (Librarian & Archivist, CSRC), and Joana Chavez (Graduate Student, CCAS).
Join Zoom Meeting – https://ucla.zoom.us/j/99096405566

Francisco Galarte presents Brown Trans Figurations
2021-05-05 16:00 - 17:30
Queer of Color Genealogies – Spring Book Series
Presentation of Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies by Professor Francisco Galarte

Note: This event has passed. Please use the following link to watch the event’s Zoom recording.

Please join us when Professor Francisco J. Galarte, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of New Mexico, discusses their latest book Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies. The event will include a presentation by Professor Galarte and a discussion led by Professor Maylei Blackwell. This event is open to all.
Join the event via Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/98970982935?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 989 7098 2935
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Within queer, transgender, and Latinx and Chicanx cultural politics, brown transgender narratives are frequently silenced and erased. Brown trans subjects are treated as deceptive, unnatural, nonexistent, or impossible, their bodies, lives, and material circumstances represented through tropes and used as metaphors. Restoring personhood and agency to these subjects, Francisco J. Galarte advances “brown trans figuration” as a theoretical framework to describe how transness and brownness coexist within the larger queer, trans, and Latinx historical experiences.
Brown Trans Figurations presents a collection of representations that reveal the repression of brown trans narratives and make that repression visible and palpable. Galarte examines the violent deaths of two transgender Latinas and the corresponding narratives that emerged about their lives, analyzes the invisibility of brown transmasculinity in Chicana feminist works, and explores how issues such as transgender politics can be imagined as part of Chicanx and Latinx political movements. This book considers the contexts in which brown trans narratives appear, how they circulate, and how they are reproduced in politics, sexual cultures, and racialized economies.

Job Market 101 - Job Market Spring 2021 Series
2021-04-30 11:00 - 12:30
Job Market 101
Dr. Valenzuela, Dr. Johnson, and Dr. Abrego will host the first job market spring series
salon. This salon will cover the nuts and bolts of the job market with the goal of demystifying the search and application process, search committee protocols, and the selection process of the candidate. This series is open to all cohorts of Chicana/o and Central American Studies graduate students.
Zoom Meeting ID: 980 4128 8340
