“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

Crystal City, Texas has been a part of the Chicano Movement narrative since the beginning. Crystal City High School like others across the United States held walkouts to protest the lack of respect for the Mexican American culture and for civil rights for Mexican Americans in schools. Crystal City is also the home to one of the original Raza Unida Parties. This rich history has placed Crystal City in a unique position in Chicano history. This study draws from Chicana Feminist epistemology, methodology, and scholarship to disrupt the meta-narrative that is and has been told of the Chicano Movement, and more specifically about Crystal City and its part in the Movement. By creating a counter narrative that is woman centered, this dissertation seeks to disrupt the binary of good/bad views of the Chicano Movement. This is done through the use of oral histories and testimonios of four women who were not directly in the spotlight of the Chicano Movement. This dissertation then briefly examines what stories our four women shared with their youngest child. This was done to investigate what the author has experienced with younger generations of Cristaleños. The experiences can best be described as disillusionment of the Chicano Movement. The major components of this dissertation are the stories the four participants share about the Chicano Movement in Crystal City, Texas. These stories are personal and touching in a way that showcases the use of Chicana Feminist methodology and disrupts the meta-narrative of the Chicano Movement and the binary of the views of the Movement. / text

College choice is often described as a three-stage developmental process where students progress through the following phases: predisposition, search and choice (Cabrera & La Nasa, 2000; Hossler & Gallagher, 1987). Existing research, however, suggests this model does not account for all aspects of Latina/os’ college choice experience (Hurtado, Kurotsuchi, Briggs, & Rhee, 1996; Perna, 2000), warranting further investigation. As such, in-depth phenomenological interviews (Seidman, 2006) were conducted with 20 Mexican American high school seniors from the South Texas Border, an area with postsecondary attainment rates below the state and national average (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008f), to gain a deeper understanding of their college choice experience. Guided by an integrated social capital and Chicana feminist conceptual framework, this study sought to uncover how the intersectionality of students’ social identities shaped their college choice process. Specifically, this study explored how students’ identities influenced their college aspirations and their access to college information, support and assistance via their social networks. Findings revealed that students negotiated among several social identities (generational college status, sibling identity, academic identity, class identity, racial/ethnic identity, co-curricular identity, regional identity) which influenced the development of their college aspirations and their ability to access college knowledge and support from their social networks in both positive and negative ways within the four main spaces (cultural/familial space, community space, school space, and cyberspace) they occupied on a daily basis. Students’ narratives further indicated that the individuals or entities in their social networks that were influential and/or considered sources of college knowledge and support included immediate and extended family members, various community members such as neighbors or members of students’ religious congregations, school personnel (counselors, teachers, co-curricular sponsors), higher education representatives and institutions, peers, and various college oriented websites found on the Internet. Students also noted, however, various challenges in navigating their college choice process that centered around: 1) parents’ limited college knowledge, 2) attending a local/regional institution or one outside the region, 3) combating negative educational stereotypes of Mexican Americans in general and those in the South Texas Border in particular, and 4) accessing adequate college information and assistance at school. / text

La descolonización de la sexualidad en la literatura chicana es una lectura de las obras de Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga y John Rechy. En ella se analiza cómo estos autores negocian su homosexualidad en un entorno homofóbico a través de su escritura. Con esta negociación podemos ver cómo se desarticula el concepto de sexualidad creado desde la Edad Media e implantado en América por la colonización. Para ello este análisis parte de la teoría post-estructuralista para explicar cómo una jerarquía en torno a la sexualidad del individuo es establecida. A través de la teoría postcolonial por un lado, y urbana por otro, podemos enlazar cómo el proyecto colonizador se basa en la homosexualidad de los nativos americanos como excusa para controlar su organización espacial y social. Una vez implantado en América el imaginario europeo en torno a la sexualidad, las sexualidades marginales van a ser reprimidas. Es por esto que autores como los aquí analizados recurren a la escritura para desarticular ese concepto de sexualidad y descolonizar así el concepto de homosexualidad. A pesar de que hay diferentes formas para descolonizar la sexualidad, este análisis se centra en dos técnicas descolonizadoras principalmente. Por un lado, el indigenismo de Anzaldúa y Moraga; por otro lado la negociación de la sexualidad marginal le en el espacio heteronormativo de Rechy. De estas dos formas se negocia la identidad sexual de los sujetos marginados dentro de una sociedad euro-centrista.

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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.

abstract: The purpose of this project is to investigate the political aesthetics of Delilah Montoya's photographic landscape image, Desire Lines, Baboquivari Peak, Arizona (2004), an image drawn from a larger photo-documentary project by Montoya and Orlando Lara titled, Sed: Trail of Thirst (2004). This thesis employs Jacques Rancière's concept of the aesthetic regime to identify how Desire Lines functions as a political work of art, or what Rancière would consider "aesthetic art." This thesis shows that the political qualities of Desire Lines's work contrast with the aesthetic regime of art and systems in the U.S. nation state that have attempted to erase an indigenous presence. Thomás Ybarra-Frausto's and Amalia Mesa-Bains' definitions of Rasquachismo, as well as Gloria Anzalúda's concept of Nepantla, are used to assist in identifying the specific politics of Montoya's work. The first portion of this thesis investigates the image's political aesthetic within the context of the politics of art, and the second portion addresses the image's political qualities within the framework of the politics of the everyday life. This thesis shows that Desire Lines, Baboquivari Peak, Arizona reveals a Chicana/o aesthetic that challenges the dominant paradigm of postmodernism; furthermore, viewing the content of the image through the concept of Nepantla allows for a political reading which highlights the work's capacity to challenge the Eurocentric view of land in the U.S. Southwest. Desire Lines, Baboquivari Peak, Arizona is an indigenously oriented photograph, one which blurs the lines of the politics of art and the everyday and has the power to reconfigure our understanding of the U.S borderland as an indigenous palace of perseverance exemplifying the will to overcome. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2014

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.