Latino Roots Celebration

June 3, 2020
4:00 pm	to	6:00 pm

This Latino Roots Celebration will mark the fifth time UO students from Latino Roots classes (Anthro/SOJC) present their ethnographic documentaries to peers, faculty, staff, and community members.

Zoom details will be sent out to our email lists. If you would like to be added please email cllas@uoregon.edu. 

Tags: CLLAS, UO

Latino Roots Class Makes Documentaries through Remote Teaching

“Rich and crazy” is how Sergio B. Sanchez describes the street art he observed growing up in his Chicano community of Santa Ana, California.

Sanchez is now a University of Oregon senior who aspires to use his talent to inspire at-risk youth. That in turn inspired fellow student Noeli Martinez-Gabriel to choose Sanchez as the subject of a class project, just as the class went remote in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sanchez is the subject of Martinez-Gabriel’s final project in the Latino Roots II class taught this quarter by Lynn Stephen and Gabriela Martínez. Stephen is a professor of anthropology, while Martínez is a professor of journalism. Their Latino Roots class sequence allows students to produce oral histories and films documenting Oregon’s Latino community.

When classes moved to remote teaching, the veteran professors decided to push themselves and their students forward, despite the unknown.

“We’re teaching how to interview on Zoom,” said Stephen, the Philip H. Knight Chair of anthropology. “We did a whole session on it, where you direct your subject, where you work with lighting, where you also do your best with sound.”

The class, which the pair is teaching for the fifth time, is a two-part sequence. The winter term section, Latino Roots I, was spent learning Latino history in Oregon and understanding the process of recording oral history.

Having gained that context and skill set, Latino Roots II students from many disciplines, including anthropology, ethnic studies, Latin American studies and journalism, usually spend spring term producing a documentary film on a single subject.

Those projects are now being adapted to social distancing. Martinez-Gabriel, who will be capturing Sanchez remotely, has been talking with the artist to find a documentary style that honors his work.

“Since he agreed to be part of my documentary, I told him this project was a collaborative process,” Martinez-Gabriel said.

When everything went remote, communication was even more key. The two agreed on a virtual interview so that Sanchez could make a creative decision about his backdrop.

Martinez-Gabriel won’t be able to make footage of him doing his graffiti-style artwork, but she’s glad that through the use of technology, she still gets to tell his story.

Students are being instructed to coach their subjects in camera positioning and wearing earbuds with a good microphone included to optimize audio, Martínez said.

“Obviously, we know that this is not going to be perfect,” she said. “And obviously we’re going to have some leeway there. But we’re encouraging everybody to work with their participants to get the best that they can get.”

Controlling for conditions like lighting, image cropping, background noise and more, subjects will likely take a more active role in these projects than they have in the past.

What will count most this time around is how well the story is told, Martínez said, not the technical expertise used to tell it. But she anticipates the experimental documentary styles will produce some strong results.

The added reliance on technology and lack of access to equipment normally lent to students by the School of Journalism and Communication is exposing some digital inequality, both professors said.

This term’s online demands call for upgrades to Wi-Fi speed and an outdated modem for student Kate Weiss. But she is grateful to have a reliable laptop to work from home, she said.

Other students don’t have newer laptops or Wi-Fi access at home. College has always been the great equalizer, Martínez said, “But once we hit a situation like this, we see the differences.”

Through the anthropology department, Stephen was able to check out five cameras to individual students off her front porch from a safe distance. They’ll keep them for the entire term.

All students have also been granted free access to Adobe Premier and received Zoom tutorials in editing video from cinema studies support instructor Kevin May. He would normally assist the class in-person in a campus media lab, but he has adapted to remote instruction, which students say has been invaluable.

While some students are featuring family members or roommates, many are reaching outside their close social circles to focus on neighbors or other community members. The goal of the project is “profiling the complexities, uniqueness and contributions of Latino immigrants in the state” and working against stereotypes, Stephen said.

Doctoral candidate Kisa Clark chose to document state Rep, Teresa Alonso Leon, whose jurisdiction is Woodburn as well as north Salem and Keizer.

“I was interested in telling Teresa’s story because she is a strong advocate for her majority Latino community and the largest Latino community in the state,” Clark said.

Some footage of Alonso Leon had already been captured in March, and Clark will intersperse that with Zoom footage and archival images.

“I am lucky to have some material from pre-pandemic,” Clark said, “but this situation has certainly changed many of my hopes for the project.”

After completion, the projects will be archived in the Knight Library special collections and published on the class website, latinoroots.uoregon.edu.

The course’s completion is normally celebrated with a public reception for a couple hundred people at the library, including an address from UO President Michael Schill. Select leaders from the Latino community are also invited to speak at each event, which also includes screenings of the films, a live band and food. Given the coronavirus situation, Stephen and Martínez plan to do their best to recreate that occasion virtually.

The strength of the class community built over two terms makes the strange circumstances of remote learning a little easier to bear, Stephen said.

“The sense of intimacy that there is through Zoom is, of course, facilitated by those prior relationships,” she said. “If we didn’t know them and we were meeting them for the first time, it would be very different. (These students) know and trust each other.”

— By Anna Glavash, University Communications, originally posted on Around the O

Tags: CLLAS, UO

Latino Roots | Around the O

June 27, 2017—Editor’s Note: Now live on the Home Page of the University of Oregon website, a feature story on the Latino Roots classes co-taught by CLLAS codirector Gabriela Martínez, and CLLAS founding director Lynn Stephen.

Latino Roots, Oregon Branches

BY JASON STONE

“You come to college to take classes like this one.

“It’s part history, part sociology, part anthropology, part journalism and part documentary filmmaking, but it’s all about the experience. The 400-level Latino Roots course is an example of the many compelling, hands-on, educational opportunities we offer at the University of Oregon. With an eye on history and a hand in technology, this course combines the theoretical with the practical and empowers students to apply their new knowledge in the real world.

“An intensive, two-term, 20-week course, Latino Roots is offered every other academic year. During the first term, centered in a formal classroom setting, students learn about the history of racial identity formation in Oregon. Next, the class moves to the Cinema Studies Lab in Knight Library for hands-on training in the use of audio-video technology and editing software, as well as learning the art of documentary storytelling.”

For the full story, with video & photographs, go to: Latino Roots | Around the O

Tags: CLLAS, Gabriela Martinez, Latino Roots, Lynn Stephen, UO

Spring 2017 CLLAS Notes now available

Spring 2017 CLLAS Notes

This spring issue of CLLAS Notes includes descriptions of three student-made documentary films that were produced in the 2017 Latino Roots classes. A celebration on June 8 will feature clips from student films, an exhibit of archived materials, and music by Springfield High School Mariachi del Sol and by Latin American guitarist, Ricardo Cardenas. 

Gabriela Martínez, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Communication and the 2016-17 interim director of CLLAS, discusses the highlights of the many winter and spring events sponsored by CLLAS. Professor Martínez will continue as codirector of CLLAS in 2017-18, along with Alaí Reyes-Santos, associate professor, Department of Ethnic Studies.

In this issue of CLLAS Notes, Professor Reyes-Santos writes about the CLLAS-supported research she is working on with anthropology professor Ana-Maurine Lara in “Decolonizing Knowledge: Afro Indigenous Women Healers in the Caribbean and Its Diasporas.” › Continue reading

Tags: CLLAS Notes, UO

Latino Roots: A Grand Celebration

 

June 9, 2017—Yesterday’s Latino Roots Celebration marked the fourth time UO students from Latino Roots classes (Anthro/SOJC)  have presented their ethnographic documentaries before an audience of peers, faculty, staff, and community, including many of the people whose stories are told in those documentaries. It was a huge turnout in the Knight Library Browsing Room, filled with the festive music of Springfield High School’s Mariachi del Sol and the appreciative and off-time eloquent remarks of featured speakers, including UO President Michael Schill, SELCO Community Credit Union Vice President Laura Illig, PCUN Secretary-Treasurer Jaime Arredondo, Oregon Center for Education Equity Director Carmen Xiomara Urbina, and others.

This year’s celebration also included the launching of the inaugural Latino Roots Awards given to our community partner SELCO Community Credit Union and Vice President of Marketing Laura Illig, and to UO Senior Vice President and Provost Scott Coltrane. The spirit of the Latino Roots Award is to recognize a member and/or institution from the community for their support and commitment to Oregon’s Latino community through the Latino Roots Project, and to recognize a representative from the University of Oregon for service, commitment, and support to enhancing diversity on campus and promoting community engagement by way of the Latino Roots Project and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies.

Sponsors for the two-hour celebration included: Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, Department of Anthropology, Office of the President, Office of the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, School of Journalism and Communication, SELCO Community Credit Union, and UO Libraries.

Here is an excerpt from the remarks of Lynn Stephen, UO Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, who co-instructs the Latino Roots classes along with Gabriela Martínez, associate professor, UO School of Journalism and Communication.

Comments from Professor Lynn Stephen:

Welcome to a wonderful moment that brings together education, research, creativity, and public engagement. I am so proud to be a part of the team of faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, librarians and archivists, research center staff, and film participants who were all a part of what we are bringing you here today.

Latino Roots began as a small collaborative project between Professor Gabriela Martínez, community consultants Guadalupe Quinn, and Patricia Cortez, the Lane County Historical Museum, and myself in 2008-2009, to mark the 150th anniversary of Oregon as a state. Latino Roots was our exhibit with panels, object exhibits, nine video stories, and a bilingual book that was seen by several thousand people in the museum.  There were exhibits on African-American history, Asian history and Native American history in Oregon to greatly broaden the settler colonial/pioneer narrative, white narrative that has dominated Oregon history. › Continue reading

Tags: CLLAS, Latino Roots, UO