Author: Proffers Perez

Class Closed

This blog is now an archive of the work of the students of Loyola Marymount University’s Spring 2012 Chicana/o Studies 404: Chicana Feminisms. This upper division undergraduate course examined the emergence and development of Chicana feminist thought from the late 1960s to the present and its relationship to the Chicano Movement, Anglo U.S. feminism and feminism of women of color. This is a public blog, intended to be used as a resource for the students in the class, but also for the larger community.  Thoughtful and respectful comments are still welcome, but given that the blog is no longer active, response time may be longer. Note: Comments have been closed due to spam traffic. Hopefully I’ll figure out a way to reopen them.  I can be reached at annemarie.perez@me.com

From the syllabus: This course focuses on current writings by Chicana feminists in the context of movements by U.S. feminists of color, exploring how Chicana feminism grew out of a resistance to the masculine nationalism as symbolized by late 1960s Aztlán mythology. We will question how this feminism ultimately queered the Aztlán space, reconfiguring nationalism as transnationalism while at the same time communicating with and responding to African American, Asian American and Native American feminisms. Throughout the quarter we will reflect on Latina traditions of feminism inviting inquiry into the different strands of Chicana / Latina feminism and how these manifest themselves both in community political activism and print cultures / textual communities.

Note: the artwork in the banner for this blog is by activist artist Rini Templeton.  Her work is amazing.  Go see it here.

Many thanks to the amazing students who were part of this course.
¡Adelente!
Annemarie Pérez

Class via Twitter

Class Friday is going to be different than usual. We’re meeting via Twitter. Over the course of the day, you’ll spend an hour tweeting and commenting on the blog.

First, read through your blog posts and choose the one you think you’d like to submit to Aztlan Reads. Next, put up a tweet with both the #CHST404 hashtag and the URL link for your post.

Read through the links others in the class have shared and take some time to read the blog posts they’ve selected. Make comments either on the blog or on Twitter that you think will help them improve that blog entry.

And that’s it. I’ll see you Monday.

Xicana Codex Tweets

Xicana Codex (3)

Reading assignment for Wednesday, April 18, 2012. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

Cherríe Moraga, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness (163 – 199)

What is your response to Moraga’s positions on President Obama’s election, marriage equality and transgendered people? What do you see her as arguing for or against?

Do you agree that there’s a lack of political and social movement in the present day? If you see social movement, where do you see them? Who are the leaders? Has Moraga missed “something” in her discussion of “back in the day.” What do you think her vision of Aztlán is and how does your generation of people of color fit into it?

Do you see universities the same way Moraga does? What role do you see universities as having in your life? In the lives of your communities? As sites of social change? What do you imagine the difference between Stanford (where Cherríe Moraga teaches), UC Berkeley (whose Ethnic Studies department she discusses) and Loyola Marymount are?

What vision, if any, of Chicana / women of color feminism does Moraga’s work offer?

More on Xicana Codex.

Xicana Tweets & Thoughts (2)

[tweet https://twitter.com/ccastan5/status/191860060798988290]

Kelsey’s response:

When Moraga was accussed by Anzaldua of plagarism, she wrote “I do know she spoke of “plagarism”.I was stunned (117).” Moraga probably thought she was just adding to the ideas that she got from Anzalduas piece, not plagarising. However, such confusion of rules and understanding that people have I think relate to the confusion of what each woman stands for in the womans movement. Even though we see the like thinking of Moraga and Anzaldua, they still held different opinions for “The Bridge called my back”. Moraga endorsed what ” The Bridge called my back” stood for with the diversity of the Feminism movement when Anzaldua didn’t support the diversity of what the book stood for. I think the Feminist movement is seperated into women who want the movement to represent all the different aspects of the movement(like Moraga), and other women who want the movement to represent seperate issues of women.

Xicana Codex (2)

Reading assignment for Monday April 16, 2012. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about both of the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

Cherríe Moraga, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness (79-162)

Based on your readings this semester on textual communities and print culture, what does Moraga’s writing reveal about the construction of communal texts, anthologies and performances? How much ownership do we have of our writing? How much debt to others? What do you think of Moraga’s decision not to contribute to This Bridge We Call Home?

On a more personal level, do you think Moraga is right about how she and Anzaldúa could have resolved their differences? Do you agree with her reading of Anzaldúa’s writing as having more to do with vision of the ideal than the more concrete politics of process?

Xicana Tweets

Cherríe Moraga, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness (1-77)

Xicana Codex (1)

Reading assignment for Friday April 13, 2012. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about both of the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

Cherríe Moraga, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness (1-77)

Moraga spends a good deal of her forward and first essay defining both terminology and her place in it. How does her positioning compare to others you’ve read? What terms would you use to define yourself?

In an earlier work, The Last Generation, Moraga wrote “An art that subscribes to integration into mainstream Amerika is not Chicano art.” How are these essays informed by, expand or under cut this theory?

How does Moraga conceive of generations in her writing? How does she connect her parent’s generation to her own? To her children’s? What is your reaction to her agreement with Sherman Alexie’s quote about his wife and children? To her discussions of grief and anger?

What are Moraga’s issues with feminism? What does she take from it? How does it inform her as a mother, a daughter, an artist? What does she call / name the “weapons of the weak”?

this bridge we call home (2)

This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, Gloria Anzaldua & AnaLouise Keating (Editors), Routledge, 2002.

Reading assignment for Wednesday April 11, 2012.  Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about both of the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

AnaLouise Keating, “Forging El Mundo Zurdo: Changing Ourselves, Changing the World” (From this bridge we call home 519-530), Gloria Anzaldúa,”Now Let Us Shift…the Path of Conocimiento…Inner Work, Public Acts” (From this bridge we call home 540-576)

this bridge we call home (1)

This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, Gloria Anzaldua & AnaLouise Keating (Editors), Routledge, 2002.

Reading assignment for Monday, April 9, 2012.  Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about both of the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

Chela Sandoval, “After Bridge: Technologies of Crossing” (From this bridge we call home 21-26), Evelyn Alsultany, “Los Intersticios: Recasting Moving Selves” (From this bridge we call home 106-110), Jid Lee “The Cry-Smile Mask: A Korean American Woman’s System of Resistance” (From this bridge we call home 397-402).