By Venetia June Pedraza

Since the 2017 conference, the NACCS Board has been working through important issues affecting our organization. This year’s board has diligently worked to make the organization remain sustainable. Our task is to insure that the membership has a continuous place and space to come together each year share in all the diversities that come with teaching and learning Chicana and Chicana Studies.

The Board had a difficult task and decision to make about the composition of the Board. First, Alexandro Jose Gradilla resigned the Board as an At-Large Representative. Second, as many of you know, Jose Angel Hernandez was removed from the board after the NACCS 2017 conference. Truly, it has been trying time on the NACCS board. However, despite the loss of some of our Board member, I want to thank this year’s remaining board members because they have worked through the difficulties and moved forward to ensure that the NACCS 2018 conference happens. Although we have experienced “bumps in the road,” this summer, the NACCS board came together and made it possible to continue with the work of NACCS, and I am happy to say that all the Call for Awards is out, the 2018 Conference site has been chosen, and the Call for Papers has just been released.

During this time of transition,  the NACCS Board revisited the Treasurer’s term. Historically, it the has been a two-year, elected position. The Treasurer oversees the financial work and health of the Association with primary account signatory, and assures that budgets and financial reports are made to the National Board and the membership in collaboration with the Executive Director. During 2015-17, NACCS Treasurer, Chalane Lechuga, began this work and with the progress that has been steadily made by prior Treasurers, NACCS has been able to provide comprehensive and detailed analyses of NACCS financials, as well as conveying critical financial information to NACCS Focos and Caucuses and the NACCS membership. In the process of completing this work, the Board recognized that it takes time to learn the work of the Treasurer and has proposed a three year-term.  In the interim, as NACCS works toward updating bylaws in order to comply with California State regulations and to ensure the financial work and health of the organization, the Board voted to suspend the bylaws to “allow Chalane Lechuga to remain as Treasurer and to integrate Cecilia Aragon as Treasurer-Elect for 2017-18 with all rights of Board membership for 2017-18.”

As the continuing NACCS Chair, I am very excited about this year’s conference theme, “The Queer Turn.” This year’s theme will help us critically explore and examine, not only the “polymorphous meanings of the term ‘queer’,” but it will also help us explore new moments of unpredicted change during this tumultuous time. As Aureliano DeSoto, NACCS Chair-Elect, states, “Academia is undergoing a radical metamorphosis. The social and political order of the United States is fractured in ways that are at once old as well as new. Resurgent racism, misogyny, political and state violence, and rising hate crimes belie the myth of a post-racial state with equality under the law. The very identity category of Chicana/o/x is transforming before our very eyes. Our challenge is to understand the Queer Turn as a productive allegory for successfully surviving and thriving in a historic moment of chaos, mutation, and perhaps transfiguration.” Hence, I invite all members of the NACCS community to submit to this year’s NACCS conference. I encourage the membership to invite others from outside the organization to submit paper proposals and panels as well.

Finally, I want to thank the NACCS membership. Without you, the membership, there would be no space where we could engage in critical dialogues that really makes our to conferences special each and every year. And I am so proud that the NACCS membership continues to show up year after year with new themes, contexts, dialogues, ways of teaching, modes of learning, and numerous perspectives – and I look forward to seeing you all in Minneapolis in 2018.

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1

By Chalane Lechuga

As of January 31, 2017, NACCS Assets totaled $81,837.02. This total includes a checking account balance of $47,712.12, Membership Dues ($16,115.24), Donations ($1085), and 2017 Conference Income ($14,810) among other assets. The liabilities include all operating expenses ($24,810.94) and some 2017 Conference Expenses. Note that the complete 2016-17 fiscal year report (June 1, 2016– July 31, 2017) will include all 2017 Conference Expenses. The Net Worth of NACCS as of January 31, 2017 is $50,026.08.

As of December 31, 2016, the Net Worth of the Antonia Casteñeda endowment is $24,610.06.

NACCS Financial Report Ending January 2017 (PDF)

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1

By Jennie Luna, Secretary

Saludos fellow NACCSistas,

The Board continues to meet monthly to carry out the business of NACCS in preparation for our 2018 Conference. Below I have compiled some highlights and key points from our conference calls. In addition to organizing for the 2018 conference, we are also working to develop stronger communication with our foco membership and caucuses. We look forward to future planning and growth of our organization.

Consolidated minutes from our most recent board meetings:
We welcomed the new board members, Cecilia Aragon, Linda Heidenreich, and Aureliano DeSoto.

Closing out last year’s conference:

By-Laws & Non-profit status:
The Executive Director is leading the reincorporation of NACCS in the state of California, to be completed before the end of the year. The board hired Kim Mesa, MBA, as a consultant on the process and paperwork. She has helped us prepare and update our files and non-profit status. The organization remains in good standing, has had consistent bank reporting and tax filing. The board is currently working with our consultant to update our bylaws to comply with State’s regulations.

Committees updates:

-Cecilia Aragon is the committee chair for the Book Award
-Linda Heidenreich is the NACCS Board Liaison to the Antonia Castañeda Award
-Brenda Valle is the committee chair for the Student Premio Award
-Chalane Lechuga is the committee chair for the Immigrant Beca Award

Board positions

The board had one At-Large rep position open due to Alexandro Gradilla’s resignation and nominated Maria Gonzalez to return to the board for the remainder of the term. She accepted.

We also have a Chair vacancy and since Aureliano DeSoto wishes to remain and carry the duties of Chair-Elect; June Pedraza (the Immediate Past Chair) has agreed to stay on and serve as the interim Chair (2017-2018), carrying the duties associated with this position and serve as Past Chair (2018-2019).

The board encourages the membership to stay active in their focos and consider nomination for a position on the board in future.

Moving Forward with NACCS and our future:
As a board we are pursuing getting an outside consultant/evaluator to help our organization continue to be strong, solid and grow for the future. This will be addressed at the Midyear meeting and an adhoc committee has been formed within the board to pursue this. As a board we are interested in finding ways to get more feedback from the membership and are open to suggestions.

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1

NACCS 45

The Queer Turn

Call for Papers 2018 Conference

Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota
April 4-7, 2018

Doubletree Hotel
Bloomington, Minnesota

Over the past thirty years, Chicana/o/x Studies has been irrevocably transformed through critical work on gender and sexuality. This metamorphosis parallels (but is not necessarily congruent to) similar effects in other disciplines and interdisciplines wrought by shifting the lens towards a more expansive understanding of the roles gender and sexuality play in identity formations, especially racial-ethnic identities.

Chicana feminisms and Chicana lesbian feminisms pushed the field of Chicana/o/x Studies to reinterpret foundational tropes of Chicano Movement thinking, such as the family, women’s and men’s sexual and social roles, carnalismo, cultural nationalism, and Aztlán. Subsequently, feminist scholars of color worked to excavate the intersectional tensions between race, gender, and sexuality, as they meet other socio-economic formative factors in Chicana/o/x Studies, such as class, education, skin color, and immigrant status.

This Queer Turn in Chicana/o/x Studies did not happen overnight, nor without pitched and often intensely personal battles between factions over who is and what exactly constitutes the appropriate Chicana/o/x subject. The echoes of these disagreements and tensions still resonate through NACCS, and the larger interdiscipline of Chicana/o/x Studies as a whole.

Thinking more expansively, we can apply the concept of the Queer Turn towards more than the critical, necessary intervention of gender and sexuality in Chicana/o/x Studies. Chicana/o/x Studies, and the United States as a whole, both seem poised on a literal and figurative Queer Turn with multiple meanings for the interdiscipline, the profession as a whole, and the broader social and political context.

Here, the polymorphous meanings of the term ‘queer’ can be applied. We are living through a moment of great change and tumult, whose final outcomes cannot be predicted, and whose parameters seem beyond the bounds of the normative. Academia is undergoing a radical metamorphosis. The social and political order of the United States is fractured in ways that are at once old as well as new. Resurgent racism, misogyny, political and state violence, and rising hate crimes belie the myth of a post-racial state with equality under the law. The very identity category of Chicana/o/x is transforming before our very eyes. Our challenge is to understand the Queer Turn as a productive allegory for successfully surviving and thriving in a historic moment of chaos, mutation, and perhaps transfiguration.

We invite papers and presentations from multiple disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives in Chicana/o/x Studies on the theme of “The Queer Turn.” Focal points can include but are not limited to:

• The legacy and continuing impact of Chicana Feminisms and Chicana lesbian feminisms
• Transgender theories and identity formations
• Intersectionality theories, applications, and critiques
• Jotería studies
• The increasing prominence of Indigenismo in Chicana/o/x Studies
• Performing and performative gender(s) inside and outside of the binary
• The descriptive nomenclature of Chicana/o/x
• Immigration and immigrants in a moment of white nationalist resurgence
• Academic cults of personality and the Academic Star System in Chicana/o/x Studies (neophytes, acolytes, camp followers)
• Mentoring undergraduate and graduate students in a time of professional and social transmutation
• Authorization and deauthorization processes in Chicana/o/x Studies
• Academic labor and hierarchies of value in the profession
• New conceptualizations of the family, family formation, mothering, parenting, and childrearing
• Program development and expansion in a time of corporatist academic reorganization
• The end of the post-Civil Rights social order and the reemergence of visceral racism in American social and political life

Submission Link 

Submissions due by November 8, 2017

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1 (Update 2)

The Board of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies expresses its determined objection to the Presidential pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona.

For 24 years, Sheriff Arpaio directed the most racist and unjust elements of law enforcement, targeting communities of color, in particular the Latino communities of Arizona. From his Tent City Jail to his aggressive pursuit of undocumented immigrants, Arpaio has continually perpetuated the ideals of white supremacy, racial profiling, and institutional racism. For these actions, he was eventually voted out of his office and convicted for violating a federal judge’s order that he cease and desist these practices.

The President’s pardon of Arpaio reinforces the ongoing criminalization and demoralization of Black and Brown communities in the United States. The pardon also interrupted an important element of the rule of law, for Arpaio had been found in contempt of a federal court, a crime for which he awaited sentencing. The pardon reinforces the lawless nature of the current administration by circumventing just and reasoned punishment for breaking the law, a state of grace wholly unavailable to Black and Latino citizens, who suffer disproportionate punishment under the criminal justice system. It is important to recall that Arpaio was convicted for his crime, yet he will not be punished for his actions, which were not victimless.

The Presidential pardon of Arpaio represents an unseemly presidential endorsement of overt institutional and personal racism. The Board of NACCS opposes this pardon, and calls unequivocally for significant and meaningful criminal justice reform for Black and Latino citizens.

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1

by Carlos R. Guerrero

In an attempt to streamline required general education courses and improve graduation rates at the California State University System, the CSU Chancellor issued Executive Order 1100 at the end of August 2017 that eliminated a key GE Section F, the Comparative Cultural Studies/Gender, Race, Class, and Ethnicity Studies, and Foreign Languages.

Cultural Studies, Gender, and Ethnicity Studies departments were taken by surprise by the Executive Order. The elimination of the Section F of the GE Package will not only reduce Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies programs but can also lead to their demise.

Throughout the system, departments have pushed back to the Executive Order. Sonoma State University, CSU, Monterey Bay, CSU, Northridge, CSU, Long Beach, and others have issued statements of concern over the executive order.

In a recent letter to the Chancellor’s office, the Chicana and Chicano Studies faculty at CSU, Northridge outlined their opposition to the Executive Order. The Deparment raised issues of faculty governance where the CSU system failed to consult affected programs, addressed that CSU failed to take into account retention rates which have risen as a result of courses in Section F, and viewed the executive order as a reflection of Western dominant culture that “erases and silences disciplines that arose out of anti-racists, anti-colonial and feminist social struggles.”

In an effort to diffuse concerns, university administrators have suggested that the courses be placed into the remaining GE sections. However, in creating such an overlay, departments feel that the courses would not only be completely diluted but also lose their value.

By eviscerating the Comparative Cultural Studies/Gender, Race, Class, and Ethnicity Studies, and Foreign Languages general education requirement, the California State University demonstrates their disregard to the importance of inclusivity and the mission of a University education.

Link to CSU, Northridge Chicana and Chicano Studies Statement

Link to Petition Against CSU EO 1100

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1

Statement from the Board of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies regarding the rescindment of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program

The Board of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies expresses its adamant opposition to the announced end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. As a scholarly field committed to a more just society, we join with those throughout our society in denouncing the end of this program and calling for immediate action to protect Dreamers and other vulnerable immigrants and to insist on comprehensive immigration reform.

DACA filled a lacuna in immigration policy by humanely addressing the problems faced by the vulnerable population of undocumented children and young adults resident in the United States with no legal recourse for relief. From the time the order was signed in August of 2012, nearly 790,000 young people applied for and received permits to work and study. They paid fees, underwent background checks, and met a number of other conditions in order to be approved for the program. And they put their faith in the government to protect their private data. While understanding both the necessity of executive action on the part of the previous administration to address this problem, as well as the purported desire to more comprehensively legislate this issue through Congress, we find the stated reasons for the end of the program specious.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement of the end of DACA on September 5th mischaracterized DACA, the problems of undocumented children in general, and the role and value of immigration in our society, favoring instead a reiteration of white supremacist ideals towards immigration and an implicit preference for the harm and punishment of nonwhite immigrants. Expecting a legislative solution to undocumented children in the current political environment while not continuing a functional and humane policy approach is not only naïve, but cruel.

Chicanas and Chicanos have a unique relationship to questions of immigration. From the failed promises of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) to waxing and waning sentiment and nativism toward Mexican migration in the 20th century, we recognize that Mexico, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans have a special relationship to the United States, through conquest, history, intermarriage, cross-border cultural, social, and economic ties, and continual migration between the two countries. Yet like other immigrant communities, we have contributed to the growth of this nation, through labor, founding small businesses, utilizing education to improve our social status, contributing to the political process and more. Dreamers were and are eager participants in these processes.

We fundamentally reject the claims of the current administration as to their aims and goals of the end of DACA, and unequivocally deplore the deleterious effects of this decision on the young people and students in our institutions of higher learning. We call on people of conscience and our legislative representatives to reject and resist this cynical and racist decision, and work together towards developing meaningful, humane immigration reform, including prescribed amnesty for people without immigrant documentation in the United States.

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1

University of California, Davis

The Department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Davis invites applicants for an assistant/associate rank search in Chicana/o Studies with a specialization in Education. Link to Announcement

San Jose State University

Mexican American Studies at San Jose State University invites applicants for an Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) with Specialization: Cultural & Creative Expression, Job opening ID (JOID): 24219. Link to Announcement

University of Texas at Austin

The Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, in coordination with the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position specializing in the intersectionality of ChicanX, LatinX, and Mexican American Studies with Gender, Women’s, and/or Sexuality Studies to begin in Fall 2018. Link to Announcement

California State University, Los Angeles

California State University, Los Angeles, invites applications for the Administrator I position of Director of the Glazer Family Dreamers Resources Center, Link to Announcement

University of Nevada, Reno (I)

The University of Nevada, Reno announces an opening for a tenure-track joint position in Communication Studies and the Gender, Race, and Identity (GRI) Program at the rank of Assistant Professor, specializing in Latina/o/x communication studies. The successful candidate will have a strong background in interdisciplinary approaches and must have research and teaching interests in intersections of gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality or related areas. Link to Announcement

University of Nevada, Reno (II)

The University of Nevada, Reno announces an entry-level tenure-track position in twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Latinx and/or Chicanx literatures to begin fall semester of 2018. The position will be a joint appointment in the English Department and the Gender, Race, and Identity Program. Applicants possessing or expecting PhDs in English, Latinx or Chicanx Studies or related fields .Secondary areas of specialization might include cultural studies, critical race theory, border theories and literatures, indigenous studies and literatures, feminist theory, queer theory, globalization and citizenship, migration, environmental humanities, visual studies, and film studies. Link to Announcement

Pomona College

The Intercollegiate Department of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies of the Claremont Colleges invites applications for a tenure-track position at Pomona College at the Assistant Professor level.  We are seeking a scholar in the interdisciplinary field of Chicanx-Latinx Studies with a demonstrated commitment to teaching and cutting-edge research.  Link to Announcement

Barnard College, Columbia University

The Department of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at Barnard College, Columbia University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professorship to commence in Fall 2018. Applicants must have a PhD in hand by the start of the appointment. Link to Announcement

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1 (updated: October 6, 2017)

NACCS Scholar,  October 1, 2017

Frederick A. Cervantes Student Premio,  October 8, 2017

Immigrant Beca Awards, October 16, 2017.

NACCS 45 Submissions (link coming soon), October 15, 2017

Antonia I. Castañeda Prize, November 1, 2017

Gloria Anzaldua, 2005 NACCS Scholar, receives special doodle on Google’s search engine.

“Today’s Doodle celebrates Anzaldúa’s ability to live across borders, whether geographical, social, or philosophical.  She put it best: “To survive the Borderlands / you must live sin fronteras / be a crossroads.”” – Google

https://youtu.be/maVwWNjMq4g

Fall 2017, Volume 42 No. 1