Tag: Chicana feminism

Reading Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! (5)

Reading Assignment: Your reply (under Comments) is due before class on Monday, February 6. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! (133-191)

How does Blackwell define and characterize the emergence and importance of Chicana print cultures and print communities? How do they fit with Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities? How does gendering post-colonialism change Chicano nationalism?

How did the writings of Hijas de Cuauhtemoc influence Chicana/o groups outside of Long Beach? What was their influence in Los Angeles, in California and the southwest?

How did Hijas de Cuauhtemoc evolve into Encuentro femenil? What significance did the newspaper and then journal have to the Chicano Movement? How did it shape Chicana feminism?

What were the issues of the Houston Chicana Conference? How did succeed and to what extent? How did it breakdown? What were the issues (and the feminisms) being contested? What were the outcomes of the breakdown?

Reading Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! (3)

Reading Assignment: Your reply (under Comments) is due before class on Monday, January 30. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! (43-90)

How would you describe the women who made up the Chicana activists in Las Hijas de Cuauhtémoc?  What were their backgrounds and experiences prior to come to Cal State Long Beach?  What sense do you have of them as people?

What were the problems Chicanas going to college in the late 1960s and early 1970s experienced? Which were the same and which were different from those experienced by Chicanos? How did Chicanas cope with these problems?

How did involvement with the Chicano Movement influence the Chicana students?  How did they change it and how were they changed by it?

What were the issues surrounding Anna NietoGomez’s election to the leadership in her campus MEChA? How was her leadership opposed?

What was/is “political familialism”? Relate Blackwell’s description of it to our earlier readings.

From where does Blackwell trace the origins of Chicana feminism? Who were these early role models?

What were some of the issues involving sex and sexuality revealed in the oral histories? What details were the most striking? How does it related to “chingón politics”?

 

Reading: Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power! (2)

Reading Assignment: Your reply (under Comments) is due before class on Wednesday, January 25. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings.

Maylei Blackwell, “Spinning the Record: Historical Writing and Righting,” ¡Chicana Power! 14 – 42.

Maylei Blackwell writes about the histories of Chicana feminism as constructed by both Chicano histories and Anglo feminism.  Are either of these histories ones you had encountered before? Where and when did you hear (prior to this course) about Chicana feminism?  When did you think it emerged?

What are the Chicano histories of Chicana feminism? According to Blackwell, how has it been historicized within Chicano scholarship? Are these histories you had heard before?  What does Blackwell mean by “vendida logic”?

What is Blackwell referring to when she discusses “East Coast regionalism”? What effect does this have on Chicana feminist history?  What are some of the problems Blackwell identifies with the way women’s history has constructed / depicted feminism in the 1960s and 1970s?  Whose history gets written? How can we read an alternate history?

Blackwell compares her methods of historiography to the styles and techniques of a DJ — how does she see that working? Does the metaphor make sense to you or does compare things that aren’t comparable?  Discuss some of the “gender insurgencies” Blackwell highlights.

 

First Day of Class

Welcome to Chicana/o Studies 404.  This blog is the site of the textual community we’re going to build as part of our study of Chicana feminist writers and communities.

Things to do before our next class meeting:

  • Send me an email from the email address you want to use for this course.  Please make sure it’s one you use and check daily.  My email address is annemarie (dot) perez (at) me (dot) com or you can use the blog email form.
  • When you get your reply from me, set up your CHST404 WordPress account.  
  • Set up your Twitter account.  Write a reply to this post in the comments section including your new Twitter handle. 
  • Follow me (@anneperez) and each other.
  • Tweet using the #CHST404 hashtag and use it to check and see what others in the class have written.

By Friday’s class, please write a blog post introducing yourself and telling us about your interest in and any experience with Chicana/o and / or women’s studies.