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School of Humanities
Hispanic / Latinx studies at UCI
A bilingual introduction / Una introducción bilingüe
For those of us who study culture, a couple of truths about language and the United States are self-evident. We can see that Spanish is a language central to the evolution of United States history, and it is the beating heart of its daily life and human interactions. Español is the tongue in which millions of residents of the United States speak intimacies, and in which they write ideas and recount their dreams. You’ll hear Mexican and Caribbean and South American varieties of castellano spoken on thoroughfares in Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, New York and just about every other American city.
Such is the prevalence of Spanish that Spanish phrases are often uttered by people who don’t think of themselves as Spanish speakers: “Vato loco gotta make a living,” a white guy says on a TV show. And just about every American knows the meaning of the several thousand English words borrowed from Spanish, including “chola,” “pollo,” and “ese,” all three of which are in my Oxford American Dictionary. Going back to the 19th century and beyond, Spanish-speaking people have founded barrios and newspapers and national organizations that have shaped what the United States is.
In a similar vein, we know that English has become a Latin American language, because the United States has become a northern territory of “Latin” America, a place where Mexican anarchists and Salvadoran union activists and Guatemalan organizers have marched and conspired to shift the course of American history. To be Latino, or Latinx, in a North American context, means that there is a good chance that English is your mother tongue, and that you express in English your connection to places in the Global South, to villages and colonias and puertos and pueblos where your family story begins.
A half century ago, the great African American cultural critic Albert Murray appropriated an archaic and ugly term of racial mixing and used it to describe an unspoken truth of United States society. He declared that the United States was “incontestably mulatto.” Murray wrote that “for all their traditional antagonisms and obvious differences, the so-called Black and so-called white people in the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other.” Today I believe we can say that the United States is as much a mestizo country as it is a mulatto country. The modern United States is a country conflicted over its mixing with Latin American immigrants and their descendants. This is the newest chapter in the long, sordid and strange history of the United States and the idea of “race,” and the evolution of the tongues spoken by its inhabitants. Multilingualism and cultural syncretism have defined what it means to be “American” since the earliest days of European settlement. Today is no different.
- Héctor Tobar, professor of English, UCI Literary Journalism Program
Leading in Hispanic / Latinx studies
The UCI School of Humanities offers a wide variety of interdisciplinary scholarship and community outreach opportunities within the realm of Hispanic/Latinx studies.
Formerly known as the Latin American Studies Center, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center recently received UCI center status. Administered by the UCI Humanities Center, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center brings together an active group of faculty and students who promote dialogue and collaboration in the study of Latin America across disciplinary boundaries and organize educational activities on Latin America.
Hispanic/Latinx studies is not confined to any one department or program. See below to explore the multitude of ways scholars, students and alumni engage with the diverse, burgeoning field.
Líder en estudios hispanos / latinos
La Facultad de Humanidades de la UCI ofrece una amplia variedad de becas interdisciplinarias y oportunidades de alcance comunitario dentro del ámbito de los estudios hispanos/latinos.
Anteriormente conocido como el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, el actual Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe recientemente recibió el reconocimiento de centro de la UCI. Gestionado por el Centro de Humanidades de la UCI, el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe reúne a un grupo activo de profesores y estudiantes que promueven el diálogo y la colaboración en el estudio de América Latina para todos los límites disciplinarios y organizan actividades educativas sobre América Latina.
Los estudios hispanos/latinos no se limitan a ningún departamento o programa. Consulte la siguiente información para explorar las miles de formas en las que los académicos, estudiantes y graduados participan en este diverso y próspero campo.
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Supporting bilingual careers
Learn why students are majoring in the most spoken non-English language in the U.S.
Apoyo a las carreras bilingües
Sepa por qué los estudiantes se especializan en el idioma más hablado en los Estados Unidos fuera del inglés.
Learning Spanish at UCI
At the UCI School of Humanities, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese does more than teach the language and pave a path for students to pursue bilingual careers. Students engage in everything from literature, linguistics and arts to film and popular culture. They also become aware of the importance of the indigenous cultures of Latin America, the significant contributions made by people of African descent to Latin America and the different traditions and languages that have shaped the history of modern Spain, such as Catalan.
Aprenda español en la UCI
En la Facultad de Humanidades de la UCI, el Departamento de Español y Portugués no solo enseña idiomas y allana el camino para que los estudiantes sigan carreras bilingües. Los estudiantes se involucran en distintas actividades, que abarcan desde la literatura, lingüística y artes, hasta el cine y la cultura popular. También reconocen la importancia de las culturas indígenas de América Latina, los importantes aportes de las personas de ascendencia africana a América Latina, y las diferentes tradiciones y lenguas que le han dado forma a la historia de la España moderna, como el catalán.
Writing Hispanic / Latinx histories
“When I started out, Chicano history was Chicano – emphasis on the masculine form of that word. Women were the landscape figures. They were often cast as mothers who didn’t venture far from the home. They remained in the shadows of history. Now you can’t study the history of Mexican Americans or Latinos without discussing women. And it’s about all people.”
- Distinguished Professor Emerita of History Vicki Ruiz was awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama for her pioneering scholarship.
Escritura de historias hispanas / latinas
“Cuando empecé, la historia del movimiento chicano era sobre los chicanos: con énfasis en la forma masculina de esa palabra. Las mujeres formaban parte del paisaje. A menudo eran representadas como madres que no iban muy lejos de casa. Fueron relegadas a las sombras de la historia. Sin embargo, ahora no se puede estudiar la historia de los mexicoamericanos o latinos sin hablar de las mujeres. Ya que se trata de todas las personas".
- Vicki Ruiz, distinguida profesora emérita de Historia, que fue galardonada con la Medalla Nacional de Humanidades de 2014, entregada por el presidente Barack Obama por su trabajo innovador en estudios chicanos/latinos.
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In his new book, Letters from Filadelfia: Early Latino Literature and the Trans-American Elite (University of Virginia Press, 2020), UCI English Professor Rodrigo Lazo broadens the historical record of the original capital of the U.S. to showcase the contributions of Spanish-speaking intellectuals. Through translations of Spanish-language documents and letters, Lazo proves that the U.S. is not a monolingual country, neither historically nor today.
En su nuevo libro, Letters from Filadelfia: Early Latino Literature and the Trans-American Elite (University of Virginia Press, 2020), Rodrigo Lazo, profesor de inglés en la UCI, amplía el registro histórico de la capital original de Estados Unidos para mostrar los aportes de los intelectuales de habla hispana. A través de traducciones al español de documentos y cartas, Lazo demuestra que Estados Unidos no es un país monolingüe el día de hoy ni lo ha sido históricamente.
Alex Borucki, associate professor of history
Alex Borucki has led the development of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database, which tracks records of slave voyages within the Americas – stretching from Boston to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and involving both the Atlantic and Pacific coast.
Kat Cosby, Ph.D. alumna in history
Kat Cosby's dissertation project addressed how the treatment of Black women in the afterlife of slavery, under the guise of whitening ideologies, contributed to the formations of regional identity and Black women’s geographies in the city of São Paulo.
Abigail Lapin Dardashti, assistant professor of art history
Abigail Lapin Dardashti's first book manuscript examines the work of Afro-Brazilian modern visual artists and international exchange during Brazil’s military dictatorship, which took hold from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Viviane Mahieux, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese
Viviane Mahieux is the author of Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life (University of Texas Press, 2011) and Una pequeña marquesa de Sade: Crónicas selectas 1921-1948 (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 2009).
Isabela Quintana, assistant professor of Asian American studies
Isabela Quintana is the author of the forthcoming book, Urban Borderlands: Neighborhood and Nation in Chinese and Mexican Los Angeles, 1870s-1930s, which examines the spatial production of borders in Los Angeles’ Chinatown and Sonoratown neighborhoods surrounding the Plaza.
Ana Rosas, associate professor of history
Ana Rosas authored Abrazando El Espiritu: Bracero Families Confront the US-Mexico Border (University of California Press, 2014), a history of the gendered imaginaries and rigors formative to the migration and settlement of mid-20th century Mexican immigrant families in Mexico and the United States.
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Crafting Hispanic/Latinx stories
Scholars in Hispanic/Latinx studies work with vast archives of literature and art spanning multiple continents. Many of them not only research Hispanic/Latinx creativity, but they also contribute to the canon. Read this bilingual story about English Professor Héctor Tobar's journey to becoming a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and best-selling author – and how he encourages students to tell their own stories.
Creación de historias hispanas/latinas
Los investigadores de los estudios hispanos/latinos trabajan con una vasta cantidad de archivos de literatura y arte que abarcan múltiples continentes. Muchos de ellos no solo investigan la creatividad hispana/latina, sino que también contribuyen al repertorio. Lea esta historia bilingüe sobre el recorrido realizado por el profesor de inglés Héctor Tobar para convertirse en un periodista ganador del Premio Pulitzer y autor de best-seller, y sobre cómo alienta a los estudiantes a contar sus propias historias.
Natalia Affonso, Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature
Natalia Affonso analyzes how contemporary lesbian, bisexual and other sexual dissident women writers from the Caribbean and Brazil have been creating anti-colonial, anti-cis-heteronormative aesthetics through their fiction and theory.
Dan Bustillo, Ph.D. candidate in visual studies
Dan Bustillo's dissertation, titled “Refusing Spectacle: Trans Latinx Counter-Security Media,” explores how trans Latinx activist media is used to challenge a variety of borders (carceral, national and digital borders of belonging).
Carlos Colmenares Gil, Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature
Carlos Colmenares Gil's dissertation, “Running from the Nation: Synthesis and Fugitivity in Contemporary Brazil and Venezuela," interrogates a series of different artistic forms, all of which trace connections between the two countries.
Arcelia Gutiérrez, assistant professor of film and media studies
Arcelia Gutiérrez’s current book manuscript traces how Latinx media activists have navigated processes of deregulation and neo-liberalization and the strategies they’ve used to push for the inclusion of Latinxs in television, film and radio from the 1980s to the present.
Valentina Román, assistant professor of English
Valentina Román studies 20th and 21st century U.S., Chicanx/Latinx studies, critical race and feminist theory, and narrative theory. She is the author of the article, “Telling Stories That Never End: Valeria Luiselli, the Refugee Crisis at the U.S.-Mexico Border, and the Big, Ambitious Archival Novel.”
Roland Betancourt, professor of art history
Roland Betancourt focuses his scholarship on bringing to the forefront marginalized persons of the Middle Ages who have often been ignored, overlooked, denied, or taken for granted. He is the author of Byzantine Intersectionality (Princeton University Press, 2020).
Alumni giving back to Hispanic / Latinx communities
As UCI Humanities alumni go on to pursue successful careers, many of them also make space in their lives to give back to their communities and pay it forward. Here are just a few of the stories that inspire us.
Graduados retribuyen a las comunidades hispanas / latinas
A medida que los graduados de la Facultad de Humanidades de la UCI continúan emprendiendo carreras exitosas, muchos de ellos también se toman el tiempo para retribuir a sus comunidades y agradecerles. Estas son solo algunas de las historias que nos inspiran.
Ph.D. Spanish and Portuguese ('19)
When Araceli Calderón ventured to the archives in Mexico City to learn about the role mothers played in the Mexican Revolution, she encountered a problem — there was no academic research on the topic.
And so began her dissertation project and personal mission: to reconstruct the voices and representations of mothers and motherhood in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Using photographs, films, postcards, and interviews, she brought into the scholarly and historical record women who — until then — had been completely omitted.
While the mission to historicize the important and broad ways that women contributed to, or were affected by, the Mexican Revolution is academically vital, for Calderón it is also personal.
“My mother was the inspiration for my project,” she says. Scrolling through archival images of women during the revolution, she adds, “Though she didn’t live during the revolutionary period, what I was reading for my dissertation reminded me of her. She is like a soldadera who had to overcome many of the socio-political conventions of her gender.”
Calderón knows a thing or two about the strength of mothers. She raised her son Brandon, age 18, alone and her path to higher education, like the women’s stories she is uncovering, was not easy.
Read the full story here.
Cuando Araceli Calderón, candidata para el doctorado de la sede de Irvine de la University of California, investigó los archivos de la Ciudad de México para aprender sobre el papel que desempeñaron las madres en la Revolución Mexicana, se encontró con un problema: no había ninguna investigación académica sobre el tema.
Y así comenzó su proyecto de tesis y misión personal: reconstruir las voces y representaciones de las madres y la maternidad durante la Revolución Mexicana (1910-1920). Por medio de fotografías, películas, postales y entrevistas, incorpora al registro académico e histórico a mujeres que, hasta ahora, fueron completamente omitidas de este.
Si bien la misión de documentar las vastas e importantes formas en que las mujeres contribuyeron o se vieron afectadas por la Revolución Mexicana es relevante en lo académico, para Calderón también es personal.
“Mi madre es la inspiración de mi proyecto”, explicó. Mientras revisaba imágenes de archivo de mujeres durante la revolución, agregó: “Aunque no vivió durante el período revolucionario, lo que estaba leyendo para mi disertación me recordó a ella. Es como una soldadera que tuvo que superar varias de las convenciones sociopolíticas de su género”.
Calderón conoce bastante sobre la fortaleza de las madres. Crió sola a su hijo Brandon, de 18 años, y su camino para acceder a la educación superior, como las historias de mujeres que está descubriendo, no fue fácil.
Lea la historia completa.
B.A. English ('19)
During the COVID-19 lockdowns of early 2020, the usual chorus of cars, buses and hustling children had vanished from the parking lot of Lynwood’s Cesar Chavez Middle School. That silence was broken a few weekends each month, however, when hundreds of families poured in for “pandemic drive-through parties” that provided free groceries, gift cards, baby essentials and other supplies along with entertainment for a few of the South Los Angeles communities hit hardest by the pandemic.
These massive food and resource fairs are the brainchild of Lynwood educator Audrey Casas. Shortly after her school transitioned to virtual instruction in early March 2020, she worried that many local students reliant on free district-provided food might go hungry during spring break. In Lynwood, where one in five people live in poverty, many of Casas’ own students had fallen through such bureaucratic cracks.
What started as gift card distributions to individual families evolved into organized food drives, and soon into all-out “pandemic parties” serving up to 2,000 families. Casas didn’t want to recreate the “silent, anti-social, almost shameful” aura of the food drives she remembers attending as a child, so while enforcing appropriate health precautions (patrons wore masks, physically distanced and mostly remained in their cars), Mastering Hope’s fairs embodied Casas’ life motto: “Have fun getting it done.”
Casas recruited jugglers, roller derby teams and a live DJ; started soliciting donations of toys and snacks to hand out to kids waiting in their cars; and invited a friend and fellow community organizer to host a free specialty coffee stand for parents.
“My whole goal is to confuse people,” she says. “I want them to think they’re at a carnival, where the groceries they get at the end are just a happy bonus.”
Read the full story here.
Desde que comenzaron los confinamientos por COVID-19 en marzo, desapareció el sonido habitual de automóviles, autobuses y niños del estacionamiento de Cesar Chavez Middle School de Lynwood. Sin embargo, ese silencio se rompe algunos fines de semana de cada mes, en que cientos de familias acuden a las “fiestas pandémicas de autoservicio” que ofrecen alimentos gratuitos, tarjetas de regalo, artículos esenciales para bebés y otros artículos, además de opciones de entretenimiento para algunas de las comunidades del sur de Los Ángeles más afectadas por la pandemia.
Estas ferias masivas de alimentos y recursos fueron ideadas por Audrey Casas, educadora de Lynwood y graduada de la UCI (Licenciatura de Artes en Inglés en 2019). Poco después de que la escuela donde Casas trabaja hiciera la transición a la modalidad virtual a principios de marzo, le preocupaba que muchos estudiantes locales que dependen de los alimentos gratuitos proporcionados por el distrito pudieran pasar hambre durante las vacaciones de primavera. En Lynwood, donde una de cada cinco personas vive en la pobreza, varios de los propios estudiantes de Casas habían sido víctimas de tales fallas burocráticas.
Lo que comenzó como distribuciones de tarjetas de regalo a familias particulares se ha convertido en colectas organizadas de alimentos, y poco después en “fiestas pandémicas” que asistieron a hasta 2000 familias. Casas no quería recrear el aura ”silenciosa, antisocial, casi vergonzosa” de las colectas de alimentos a las que recuerda haber asistido cuando era niña, por lo que mientras hace cumplir las precauciones de salud adecuadas (los clientes usan mascarillas, hay distanciamiento físico y la mayoría permanece en sus automóviles), las ferias de Mastering Hope encarnan el lema de vida de Casas: “diviértete haciéndolo”.
Casas reclutó malabaristas, equipos de roller derby y un DJ en vivo; comenzó a solicitar donaciones de juguetes y refrigerios para repartírselos a los niños que esperaban en sus automóviles; e invitó a un amigo y compañero organizador comunitario a atender un puesto gratuito de cafés especiales para padres.
“Mi objetivo principal es confundir a la gente”, indicó. “Quiero que piensen que están en un carnaval, donde los comestibles que reciben al final son solo un afortunado agregado”.
Lea la historia completa.
B.A. Spanish ('72)
On the surface, Al Encinias ’72 didn’t appear to be college material. But that is the whole point of this story.
His story begins when he was ditching school in his East L.A. neighborhood one day back in 1967. A van pulled up and a lady inside asked if he wanted to go to college. He barely even went to high school. But for some reason, he heard himself saying, “Sure, why not.”
Encinias climbed into the lady’s van and next thing he knew he was at an office listening to her spiel about how higher education would change his life. This was all news to him. His high school classes consisted of woodworking, typing and cosmetology.
“Minority students were not expected to go to college,” he says.
But Encinias liked what he heard and so he signed some papers, becoming one of the first minority students (he’s Hispanic and Native American) admitted into a California university under the state’s “2 percent rule” affirmative-action program, a precursor to the Educational Opportunity Program, which was created in 1969.
When Encinias arrived at UCI in 1968, bison still roamed and orange groves scented the air, a serene switch up from the concrete jungle of East LA. But he was lost in the classroom.
“UCI saw potential in me," he says. "Maybe they saw a brightness that I didn’t even see. But they just kindled it and blew on the fire to make it brighter.”
After graduation, Encinias became a gang and drop-out intervention specialist for Santa Ana schools, leading an after-school program for at-risk kids.
“I wanted to give students a vision of education like UCI gave me a vision of education. To show them that life is full of opportunity, but if you’re not prepared for that opportunity then it’s going to pass you by,” he says. "The students who are basically all the ‘bad’ kids you don’t want to have in your classroom. That’s who I wanted.”
Read the full story here.
B.A. Spanish ('94)
In 2021, alumna Lauren Gómez was named a California Teacher of the Year. This award “recognizes exemplary teachers who best represent all of California’s teachers and symbolize the profession’s contributions to quality education,” according to the California Department of Education’s website. This year, only five teachers were awarded.
Gómez is a third-grade teacher at Glenn L. Martin Elementary School in Santa Ana, California. She has been an educator for over 25 years.
In this Q&A, Gómez shares her thoughts on the profession; her commitment to making a difference in her school, district and community; and appreciation for her time at UCI.
B.A.s comparative literature and Spanish literature ('93)
Rigoberto (Rigo) Rodríguez came to UCI as a late admit in the winter of 1988. The admission letter arrived after more than 20 college rejection letters had depleted his hope of ever attending college.
“I went to four different high schools and I remember thinking ‘Who is going to make sense of these transcripts?’ I didn’t know what kind of potential I had but I was happy UCI saw some in me,” Rodríguez says.
Rodríguez (’93 B.A.s in comparative literature and Spanish literature, ’99 M.A. urban & regional planning) didn’t even know where Irvine was at the time. Born in Salinas, California into a Mexican farmworker family, he was the youngest of thirteen children and one of the first generation in his family to go to college. He knew almost nothing about the process for getting into college and what to do when he actually got there. Despite those barriers, he hopped on a bus with $8 in his wallet and a plastic bag of his clothes.
“I had just enough money to get a taxi cab to bring me [to UCI]. I just showed up the Saturday before the semester started. The staff member was shocked that I didn’t have a place to stay but she found me a spot in Mesa Court, got me a student I.D. and got me settled,” he says.
Read the full story here.
B.A. history and Spanish ('93), M.A. Spanish literature ('95), Ph.D. Spanish and Portuguese ('01)
Fresno State University President and UCI Humanities alumnus Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval always knew he would return to California’s Central Valley after his education. But before returning home, he would take a path of learning and discovery that led him through UCI and other parts of the world.
“My parents very early on realized the value of higher education,” he says. “Back in Mexico, they knew that a degree from a university meant a better life and meant that the person would contribute on a much higher level, or in a leadership position, to society. They could see that very clearly.”
The youngest of eight children, Jiménez-Sandoval arrived in California when he was nine. His father had come to the U.S. in the 1950s, farming his tomato ranch near the small town of Fowler, a stone’s throw from Fresno. After years of traveling back and forth to Mexico, his father finally moved the family to the region in 1980.
For a young immigrant boy growing up in the 1980s, there was so much to explore: the language, the culture, the food (“I had never had spaghetti. And I didn’t know baked beans could be sweet.”). In his new, diverse community, Jiménez-Sandoval befriended kids of many different ethnicities. He began participating in clubs and sports. By high school, he was taking honors classes and focusing on getting straight As.
“It was really beginning a journey of self-exploration, of self-meaning: Why am I in this new land? What do my roots represent in this new land? How do I contribute to it?” he says. “It took me quite some time to develop a sense of belonging and a sense of self within the region and then within myself.”
While Jiménez-Sandoval viewed California as a world of endless opportunities and a place to fulfill dreams, it wasn’t always easy. He recalls suffering discrimination, including lateral discrimination from second- and third-generation Mexican Americans who had been in the region for a long time.
“But during each stage of my life,” he says, “I had someone who was there and who just believed in me every step of the way.”
Read the full story here.
Giving to Hispanic / Latinx studies
Hispanic/Latinx studies at UCI has grown tremendously in recent years thanks to the following community members. To learn more about how to contribute, click here.
Contribuciones a los estudios hispanos / latinos
Los estudios hispanos/latinos en la UCI han crecido enormemente en los últimos años gracias a los siguientes miembros de la comunidad. Para obtener más información sobre cómo contribuir, haga clic aquí.
Thank you to the following donors. Gracias a los siguientes donantes:
Stella Cardoza
Fernando and Olga Niebla
Marilyn and Tom Sutton
Getting involved / Como participar
Want to be part of an exciting corner of UCI? Join us at the following event.
¿Quiere formar parte de un espacio emocionante de la UCI? Consulte este evento.
Behind the Scenes at the UCI School of Humanities presents: "Latino/a/x Voices – Storytelling, Literature and Language."
On Oct. 11 at 12:00 p.m., join UCI Humanities Dean Tyrus Miller in conversation with three promiment UCI Humanities faculty for an exclusive virtual presentation. Experts in Latino/a/x language and literature will share insights on the incorporation of Spanish in English-language writing, the relationship of language to identity, and how Spanish language is evolving.