Founding CLLAS Director Publishes New Book on Elena Poniatowska

Faculty Publication

Founding Director and member of the CLLAS Executive Board, Lynn Stephen (Anthropology), has published a new book on Mexican intellectual and author, Elena Poniatowska.

From Duke University Press:

From covering the massacre of students at Tlatelolco in 1968 and the 1985 earthquake to the Zapatista rebellion in 1994 and the disappearance of forty-three students in 2014, Elena Poniatowska has been one of the most important chroniclers of Mexican social, cultural, and political life. In Stories That Make History, Lynn Stephen examines Poniatowska’s writing, activism, and political participation, using them as a lens through which to understand critical moments in contemporary Mexican history. In her crónicas—narrative journalism written in a literary style featuring firsthand testimonies—Poniatowska told the stories of Mexico’s most marginalized people. Throughout, Stephen shows how Poniatowska helped shape Mexican politics and forge a multigenerational political community committed to social justice. In so doing, she presents a biographical and intellectual history of one of Mexico’s most cherished writers and a unique history of modern Mexico.

https://www.dukeupress.edu/stories-that-make-history

Tags: books, Elena Poniatowska, faculty, Lynn Stephen, Mexico, publications

The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public

Faculty Publication

CLLAS Director Chris Christopher Chávez has published, “The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public;” it is forthcoming.

From the publisher, the University of Arizona Press:

As a network that claims to represent the nation, NPR asserts unique claims about what it means to be American. In The Sound of Exclusion, Christopher Chávez critically examines how National Public Radio conceptualizes the Latinx listener, arguing that NPR employs a number of industry practices that secure its position as a white public space while relegating Latinx listeners to the periphery. These practices are tied to a larger cultural logic. Latinx identity is differentiated from national identity, which can be heard through NPR’s cultivation of an idealized dialect, situating whiteness at its center. Pushing Latinx listeners to the edges of public radio has crucial implications for Latinx participation in civic discourses, as identifying who to include in the “public” audience necessarily involves a process of exclusion.

See more here: https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-sound-of-exclusion

Tags: books, Christopher Chávez, Latinx Studies, NPR, publications

CLLAS Faculty in Leadership Positions

Current and Former CLLAS Directors Profiled in SOJC Article

SOJC article profiles current CLLAS Director, Chris Chávez and previous CLLAS Director, Gabriela Martínez, who now leads WGSS.

Two long-term School of Journalism and Communication scholars have been recently appointed to leadership roles in cross-campus programs.

Associate professor Chris Chávez is the new director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, succeeding professor Gabriela Martínez ’05, who is the new head of the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Both will also continue teaching in the School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC).

Established experts in their fields, the two faculty members’ groundbreaking research places them on the leading edge of media studies and international communication and contributes to the interdisciplinary work taking place at UO.

Chávez has been involved with the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies since he joined UO in 2013.

Read more here: https://journalism.uoregon.edu/news/chris-chavez-gabriela-martinez

Tags: Christopher Chávez, Gabriela Martinez, SOJC

Grant-Writing Workshop for Graduate Students

Event Video

The Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies held its annual Grant Writing Workshop targeted toward graduate students on February 1, 2022. This workshop was led by CLLAS Director Chris Chávez and the CLLAS team.

You can watch a recording of our grant-writing workshop here.

Tags: graduate students, grant writing

Oregon Water Futures

UO Professor Alaí Reyes-Santos Collaborates with OEC to Elevate Water Justice

“A changing climate, aging infrastructure across the state, and lack of ongoing investment in clean water have left Oregon’s water systems stressed, putting our health, safety, economy and environment at risk. Communities of color, particularly those that are rural and low- income, are often on the front lines of these impacts, facing a wide range of threats, including rising utility rates, disparities in drought and flooding vulnerability, and exposure to nitrates, pesticides, and heavy metals. In some rural counties, Native peoples and communities of color represent 30–40 percent of the population, yet face significant barriers to participating in state policy and infrastructure discussions. In metropolitan areas such as Eugene, Salem, and Portland, low-income communities and communities of color find themselves at high risk for water insecurity and climate-related disasters as documented during wildfires and seasonal flooding events.” — Project Overview / Oregon Water Futures Project Report

September 27, 2021—In fall 2020 Alaí Reyes-Santos, a UO associate professor of indigenous, race and ethnic studies, along with others working collaboratively in the Oregon Water Futures Project, interviewed more than 100 people in Native, Black, Latinx, and migrant communities throughout Oregon, holding conversations with them about water challenges and culturally specific resiliency. They collected a range of stories that underscored the threats and impacts to Oregonians, particularly Native peoples and communities of color, of an aging water infrastructure, climate change, and lack of public investment in clean water. They found that many of the people they interviewed did not trust their drinking water, and that they often faced significant barriers in participating in policy discussions.

A synopsis of their findings, along with the full report, can be found at:  https://oeconline.org/new-report-elevates-water-justice-in-oregon/. The project website holds relevant op-eds, interviews, and report summaries in four languages.

In a letter sent mid-September 2021, Prof. Reyes-Santos offers a gracious thank you to CLLAS and other UO units that supported her research on Oregon Water Futures. Starting out in 2019 as a collaborative effort with the Oregon Environmental Council (OEC), this project has since attracted “a historic 340 million dollar investment on water in the 2021 legislative session; with 1.5 million dedicated to engaging communities of color and other historically underserved communities in conversations about water in the state,” Reyes-Santos wrote.

CLLAS was among the first to provide seed funding for Prof. Reyes-Santos’s Oregon Water Futures Project, awarding her, along with the OEC, a CLLAS Faculty Collaboration Research Grant in 2019. Other UO funders include the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, the Center for Environmental Futures, and the Vice-Provost Office for Research and Innovation. The collaborative later received funding from Meyer Memorial Trust, the Collins Foundation, and the Lazar Foundation. The Meyer grant was renewed and now includes a collaboration with UO’s School of Law’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center. 

Tags: Alaí Reyes-Santos, Water Rights