Not available / text

This dissertation investigates how Regional Mexican radio in the U.S. tracks and drives changes in Mexican-American identity by combining different musical genres to create composite portraits of its audiences. Regional Mexican radio, which plays a mixture of ranchera, norteño, banda, and other regional Mexican genres to target a largely working-class audience of recent immigrants, is currently the most popular Spanish-language format in the U.S. Programmers for these stations act as mediators, navigating the public relation between notions of Latino identity constructed by national Spanish-language media conglomerates and local demographics. By modifying the generic composition of their playlists to strike a compromise between the two, they both monitor and produce the sociomusical categories that distinguish their listenership. Ethnographic research at Regional Mexican radio stations in Austin and San Antonio demonstrate the role that institutional organization plays in creating programming. National conglomerates that increasingly own these stations determine the broad outline of the industry, but local programmers make most decisions about programming content. Based on a historical review of Tejano radio, I argue that the musical mixtures created by Spanish-language programmers have responded to both past and present social and economic challenges facing Mexican-American immigrants. Through detailed analysis programming at five Regional Mexican stations, I argue that each variety of music played signifies regional, generational and gendered variations of Mexican-American identity that stations combine in different proportions to reflect local listenership. I also explore the role of station-sponsored events in gathering information about listeners. Events encourage listeners to embody their status as part of the Regional Mexican audience, a concept ultimately constructed by the radio stations. Ultimately, this dissertation adds to existing literatures on Spanish-language media, radio and Mexican-American music. / text

Young women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico are coming of age in an era of feminicides, drug wars, impunity, and fear. This ethnographic study examines the ways in which Preparatoria Altavista, a public high school, in one of the most marginalized areas of Juárez, attempts to empower subaltern young women through its critical and social justice philosophy of education. The study draws from critical pedagogy, socio-cultural theory, and feminist scholarship to offer a unique analysis of how hegemonic ideas are resisted and/or inscribed pedagogically, politically, and institutionally at Altavista. Secondly, the study examines how the school’s constructions of democratic and social justice education interact with the current dystopic context of Juárez and discourses about Juárez women to provide a framework with which a group of young women author their identities and practice forms of resistance. The ethnographic fieldwork took place in the 2009-2010 academic year. The methods included unstructured ethnographic interviews with teachers, administrators, and numerous students, as well as semi-structured interviews and an auto-photography technique with nine girls. The study identifies three interrelated aspects that characterize the transformative pedagogy of Preparatoria Altavista: freedom and autonomy, authentic caring relationships, and the cultivation of critical discourse and activism. Together, these core values promote the school’s ultimate goal for its students – autogestión, or the ability to self-author empowered identities; read their world; and initiate and develop socially transformative projects. Considering the school’s context, as well as the many challenges inherent in the dystopic Juárez of today, the study also identifies a typology of four different paths to the girls’ identity and agency development: the Redirectors, the Reinventors, the Redefiners, and the Refugees. This typology is based on various ways and degrees to which the young women in this study authored the self as they negotiated the messages from the multiple figured worlds that they inhabit. The study seeks to counter sensationalist, criminalizing, and dooming narratives about Juárez youth, as well as stereotypical and objectifying depictions of Juárez women by offering a nuanced analysis of their experiences, perspectives, identities, and forms of agency. The study also seeks to offer a language of possibility and hope for urban schools and contexts of civil unrest through critical pedagogy. / text

The recent attacks on ethnic studies programs both in Arizona with house bill 2281 and locally at the University of Central Texas serve as an urgent call to address how ethnic studies programs impact the educational trajectories of students. Additionally, research done on ethnic studies programs has largely focused on high school programs, overlooking programs in higher education. Therefore, this study addresses the following question: In what ways does being a Mexican American Studies major influence the experiences of Latinas at a predominately White institution (PWI)? Using Chicana feminist thought and Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth model as theoretical perspectives this study seeks to; 1) understand an educational approach (ethnic studies) that has shown success with students of color, 2) fill in the gap in the literature of ethnic studies programs in higher education, and 3) look at the gendered experience of Latinas at PWIs. Through a thematic analysis of six in depth interviews and a focus group conducted with six Latina undergraduates the author finds that Mexican American Studies represents a site or process of reclaiming and redefining. Four major themes are identified and discussed; reclaiming knowledge, the self, and space(s) and redefining la mujer. The findings suggest that there is a relationship between student retention and ethnic studies programs, adding epistemic and mestiza capital to Yosso’s community cultural wealth model, and using ethnic studies programs as models of how to best support students of color at PWIs. The author concludes with the suggestion that more research is needed on the experiences of other undergraduate students (White, African American, men, etc.) that are ethnic studies majors in order to further understand the impact, importance, and wealth of potential in these programs. / text

No description available.

El Plan de San Diego is the name of an important document in Texas history, but the document and surrounding history is usually discussed with little or no reference to the town of San Diego, Texas, the people who lived there, or the cultural landscape. The Plan de San Diego is an unsuccessful rebellion that is one of the few documented irredentist revolts in U.S. History, it is also a written document calling for return of lands in a multi-ethnic call to arms advocating the recovery of territory by people of Mexican descent in 1915, named for the town San Diego, TX. After the discovery of this Plan, Mexican-Americans were persecuted, violently suppressed, and murdered: 300-5,000 people of Mexican descent died violently following the discovery and publication of the Plan de San Diego in what historians have called the “Bandit Wars”. San Diego, Texas residents and the entire U.S.-Mexican borderlands changed after the discovery of the Plan. My research investigates the political landscape and changes in material and cultural assemblages during and after the Plan, examining how descendant communities retained ties to place and remembered this event in the community of San Diego. Archival research, Historical archaeology and media representations of San Diego explore expose the everyday lives, settlement patterns, and subsistence strategies of the residents of San Diego before and after 1915, showing the material and social effects of the failed rebellion. The socio-political landscape that helped create Mexican-American culture in San Diego is a silenced, violent, and misunderstood chapter of Texas history that shapes the current borderlands and contributes important insights into the study of sites of rebellion and retaliation worldwide.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-179).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: B, page: 6566. Adviser: Steven H. Kelder. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.P.H.)--University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health, 2007. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-04, page: 1936. Adviser: Corinne C. Aragaki. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-216).