While Mexican Americans have put their lives to paper prior to the years of el movimiento, in this project, I begin my analysis with authors who voice their selves immediately before and after the Chicano Movement. Authors like José Antonio Villarreal in Pocho (1959), Ernesto Galarza in Barrio Boy: The Story of a Boy’s Acculturation (1971), and Richard Rodriguez in Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), in their efforts to represent self and narrative multiple selves, wrote what many see as the foundational texts that speak to or enliven Mexican American experiences during this formative period. Upon closer consideration, we see the ways in which these early texts initiate and create on-going conversations about form, fiction, identity, and truth. Rather than establishing a kind of literary nationalism, at the time, that rejected Anglo literary conventions, particularly in the field of autobiography, Villarreal, Galarza, and Rodriguez mirror many of the Western, male, heteronormative, autobiographical conventions in their texts, ones they read and admired while growing up as Mexican Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. In contrast to these earlier Mexican American writers, Chicanas such as Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Norma Elia Cantú, offer alternative, multi-generic models of life narrative. In my project, I consider the ways in which Chicano self-writing carves out a space of racial representation and how that form, originated and altered by the Chicana/os mentioned above, has evolved to accommodate and even embrace such forms as dichos, myths, recipes, photographs, letters, poems, among others. Chicana authors Sheila Ortiz Taylor, Sandra Ortiz Taylor, Pat Mora, and Michele Serros employ various autobiographical strategies to establish a self-narrated tradition that differs from the works of early Chicano writers. Following in the footsteps of his Chicana predecessors, Luis Alberto Urrea, too, challenges form to tell the story of his life. These writers do not simply “modify” or “adapt” existing genres; rather, they make and remake an entire corpus of related autobiographical genres in order to participate in the larger literary tradition of life narrative. / text

The chief argument of this work rests on the idea that culture-blindness—especially White ethnic-cultural blindness—contributed as much as issues of race to the heavily documented social rift between predominantly Chicanx, Eastside punk and the mostly-White, Westside punk rock communities of Los Angeles, 1976-1981. To date, historical blame for the divide has centered on racism, including racist intent. The second area of analysis directly relates to the first in that it demonstrates the inextricable link between cultural and spatial identity formation and assignment among the various scenes. This aspect of the study evaluates the complaints of some Eastside acts who have contended that based on racist attitude(s), they were prohibited from playing in Westside venues, thereby limiting their opportunities for gaining notoriety in the industry overall. This evaluation attempts to weigh the validity of that complaint against other determinative, influential aspects of the entire punk phenomenon. Lastly, through historically tracking the remnants of cultural Chicanismo clear into L.A.’s first and succeeding punk waves, this work analyzes the art of protest, and the protest in art as applied to that city’s diverse punk aesthetics.

This thesis analyzes at how Latinx Hip Hop artists from Chicago act as organic intellectuals within their community and how they use their platform as artists to challenge the narratives created by government officials that aim to criminalize their community in an effort to normalize and justify the policing of their neighborhoods.

“Sonic Gentitud” brings American Indian and Chicana/o literatures into sound studies as testimonials to decolonial and transformative listening practices. I argue that the narrative forms and paratexts in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977), Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991), Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues (1995), and Nina Marie Martínez’s ¡Caramba!: A Tale Told in Turns of the Card (2004) remap the cognitive space of sonic (re)production by offering textual and graphic representations of sound and listening. Understanding this articulation of the literary to the sonic as a form of audile realism, I highlight the listening citizen as a prominent figure in literary renderings of enduring Laguna, Spokane, Chicana/o, and Greater Mexican community-formation and growth. A self-consciously aesthetic narrative depiction that links embodied practices of listening to the historical, material, and political contours and discourses of a specific locale, audile realism represents subversive and differential listening practices that transform social networks of sonic (re)production such that they serve the interests of the tribal nation or Greater Mexican community. Listening citizens are thus critical actors in the maintenance of gentitud, a form of community- and network-building that recognizes affiliation as always-already performed across differences of race, class, gender, and/or sexuality. / text

This thesis project centers on the use of pedagogy and education as forms of social protest during the Chicana/o Movement. Following Chicana/o Movement historiography, this project seeks to explore and explain the events behind the establishment and demise of Juárez-Lincoln University in Austin, Texas. Using this institution as the primary focus, the history of the Chicana/o Movement will be examined using the lens of liberation pedagogy to explore how and why an institution such as Juárez-Lincoln University is missing from the larger historical narrative. Placing Juárez- Lincoln University into the context of the Chicana/o Movement will then provide a space for examining the use of education and radical pedagogies as a form of social protest equal to the more visible and studied La Raza Unida Party. This study will serve an introduction to the complex history of education as activism during the Chicana/o Movement. / text

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This thesis first analyses the context and linguistic mechanisms of Spanglish within Chicano literature. Then the issue of multilingual translation is examined through the case study of A. Morales Reto en el paraiso. After looking into the many difficulties stemming from the translation of a Spanglish text into a third language, namely French, I will propose my own translation of the first chapter of the novel. In general, a foreignizing approach was preferred, although some complexities of Spanglish occasionally forced the translator to adopt a more domesticating approach. In sum, this dissertation endeavours to provide practical as well as theoretical answers to the challenges of translating multilingual texts. / Translation Studies

This thesis does not adhere to “traditional” academic criteria which I feel tends to be rigid, constrained ways of regurgitating knowledge. It is not easily digestible, nor is it something that offers concrete answers. Rather it is a critical understanding of many of my experiences in the last four years of education, with a specific focus on the most recent events that have unfolded in my personal and academic life. This thesis is a journey. It is by witnessing communities in New York City, Bolivia, Tlaxcala, Mexico City, Chiapas and Southern California that continue to struggle and hope in the face of neoliberal, power-hungry nation-states, that propels me forward and brings me hope and a renewed sense of consciousness as to where I want to go.

This film thesis has become a staple in the documentation of the Chicano movement. Chicano Moratorium documents the Social Justice March on August 29,1970 in East Los Angeles. This peaceful anti-war demonstration turned into a police riot. Thomas Myrdahl, creator, and his associate, Nick Sherbin, from USC, filmed the event. The film was used by Chicano Leaders who screened the film for various congressmen in Washington DC as part of their case for legislative reform. Over the years, the film has become iconic. The Social Justice March has become an important event that bound the Chicano Community in demanding social change. This film and metadata were donated by Thomas Myrdahl.

This dissertation examines the works of four Chicana/o writers who write about Los Angeles, California urban spaces, and how the literary protagonist experiences the material realities of everyday life. The objective of this dissertation is to look at the mechanisms used by the narrator and the meaning they transmit through the description of urban space. David Harvey's theory on the Urbanization of Consciousness is used to analyze the spatial transformation taking place in Los Angeles from the 1960's to the 1980's. Moreover, I utilize Michael de Certeau's explanations of how the practices of everyday life influence the author's cartographic imaginary. These practices are manifested in the narrator's description of the physical and social space and they convey an ideological message that points to the process of urbanization of consciousness in a capitalist society. Additionally, it draws together the work of important theorists such as Henri Lefebvre, Rodolfo Acuña, Mario Barrera, and James Diego Vigil. Chapter one introduces the theoretical framework that is used throughout this study. It establishes a definition of the urbanization of consciousness and how the main characters' interact with money, family, community, class, and the State. Chapter two explains how the rapid urban development in East Los Angeles during the 1960's shaped the characters' upbringings in the novel Their Dogs Came With Them (2007) by Helena María Viramontes. Chapter three analyzes how urban space molds the consciousness of the individual in Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (1993) by Luis J. Rodríguez. Chapter four examines the architectural imagination in the novel of Alejandro Morales' Caras viejas y vino nuevo (1975). Chapter five studies the urbanization of gang violence among Chicana/o youth in the work of Yxta Maya Murray, Locas (1997). My investigation leads me to conclude that the Chicana/o community became urbanized when its members began to mirror its fragmented environment and when they began to see themselves as wage workers.