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Ethnic Studies Events

Fall 2008 Ethnic Studies Colloquium meets each Wednesday at 3:00pm in SSB 107 on October 1, 15, 29; November 5, 12, 19; December 3. The colloquium is open to the public.

November 19: The colloquium will feature Sherene Razack, Ph.D., Professor, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Faculty News

The Linguistic Minorities Research Institute of the University of California has awarded Professor A.C. Zentella a research grant for :"A Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Transfronterizos: School Networks and Linguistic Capital of HIgh School Students on the San Diego-Tijuana Border."

Alumni News

Congratulations to Natchee Blu Barnd, Ofelia Ortiz Cuevas, Theresa Cenidoza Suarez, Theo Verinakis, and Thuy Vo Dang who defended their doctoral dissertations in May and June of 2008. Ms. Cuevas has received a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2008-2010, which she will fulill at UC Riverside Department of Ethnic Studies. Ms. Cenidoza Suarez has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Critical Race Studies in the Department of Sociology at California State University San Marcos. Mr. Verinakis has received a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre For Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. Ms. Vo Dang is a Lecturer for UCSD Ethnic Studies Department for 2008-09. Faye Caronan (Ph.D., 2007) has received a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2008-09 and will join the faculty of the University of Colorado, Denver as an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies after completing her fellowship.Denise Khor (Ph.D., 2008) successfully defended her dissertation, "Asian Americans at the Movies: Race, Labor, and Migration in the Transpacific West, 1900-1945" in January, 2008; Dr. Khor is currently a Post Doctoral Associate and Lecturer, Program in Ethnicity, Race and Migration and Department of Film Studies at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University. Ashley Lucas (Ph.D., 2006) has received a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2008-09 and will join the faculty of the Department of Theater, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill as an assistant professor after completing her fellowship. Ernesto Martinez (B.A., Economics and Ethnic Studies, 2003) successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University in December, 2007. "The Chinese of Mexicali" is a study and analysis of the Chinese diaspora focusing on the U.S.- Mexico Border city of Mexicali. Jesse Mills (Ph.D., 2008) successfully defended his dissertation on Somalis and the structures of refuge in December, 2007; Dr. Mills is an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at University of San Diego. Paula Marie Seniors (Ph.D., 2003) is completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Africana Studies and Race and Social Policy Research Center in the Sociology Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA; she will begin an appointment as assistant professor there in July, 2008.

Graduate Student News

Myrna García and Michelle Gutiérrez have each been awarded the UC President's Dissertation Fellowship for 2008-09. Ms. García's dissertation, Identity, Community, and Mexican Immigration: Creating and Contesting Mexicanidad in Chicago, 1968 – 1986, investigates how the influx of Mexican immigration during the 1970s shaped the social dynamics of identity and community formation in the history of ethnic Mexicans in Chicago. Ms. Gutiérrez's dissertation, Ambivalent Service and a Tenuous Home Front: Latina Women and the US Military, reflects the demographic range of Latinas in terms of age, country of origin, and citizenship status and how these factors are constitutive to Latinas' lives as soldiers and as spouses. Martha Escobar has accepted a Visiting Research Fellowship at the U.S.-Mexican Studies Center for the 2008-2009 academic year. Ms. Escobar's dissertation research examines how the institutions of welfare, immigration, and the criminal justice system—including policies, state agents, and discourses—interact to organize the lives of Mexican immigrant women. Oral histories of immigrant women who are or were imprisoned in California will be examined to provide a map of the interactions between state policies, state agents, advocacy organizations, and immigrants and their families.