CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF STRENGTH IN SOLIDARITY
CCSRE eNEWSLETTER | OCTOBER 27, 2021
FEATURED NEWS & EVENTS
Catherine Ramírez (UCSC) discusses recovery projects, decolonial tasks, and the value of experience
BY PERLITA R. DICOCHEA | October 27, 2021

Catherine Ramírez, Chair of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) and featured speaker for CCSRE’s upcoming Faculty Seminar on Assimilation: An Alternative History, had a formative experience as a graduate student—she recalls seeing an installation by artist Judith Baca at SFMoma that was a pivotal moment in her academic career and continues to shape her scholarship.

“I was inspired to write The Woman in the Zoot Suit, which started out as my dissertation in Ethnic Studies, when I saw Judith Baca’s 1976 multimedia triptych Las Tres Marías (The three Marias). In one panel we see a painting of a cholas from the 1970s…and then on another panel we see a Pachuca from the 1950s. Judith Baca told me that painting was based on her own memories of seeing Pachucas in the 50s,” explained Ramírez, who also knew Pachucas growing up in Southern California. 

“The center panel is the mirror. So when I stood before the Las Tres Marías I thought, ‘Wow, here is this whole line of women, of which I am a part.’ But this has been totally ignored in Chicano Studies. [My dissertation] was very much a recovery project inspired by the discrepancies between what I was learning in school and what I knew from my own life.”
Ramírez has been awarded fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford; UCSC’s inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for a John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Cultures; and UCSC’s Excellence in Teaching Award. 
What follows are excerpts from my interview with Ramírez about her research on assimilation, strategizing interdisciplinarity, the decolonial tasks of Chicanafuturism, and the ways her experiences have informed her scholarship.

CCSRE: In your book Assimilation: An Alternative History, you argue that the process is one wherein the lines between unequal groups, the integrated and the outsider, are both blurred and reinforced. How did you first come to recognize the problem with the polarized view of assimilation, which lean on one or the other side of the equation?

Ramírez: Once I became interested in the topic of assimilation I was struck by how much assimilation was defined as a kind of disappearing act, a blending in and, for the assimilated, according to the dominant theories in sociology, for example, it involves the loss of ethnicity and ethnicity
becomes merely symbolic. [Ethnicity] is celebrated with food, flags, certain holidays like Saint Patrick’s Day, but it is not a stigma, it is not a barrier to access to institutions or societal resources. What struck me about that definition was how well integrated certain people are in society while at the same time they are not just excluded, they are targeted, they are persecuted by the state, and their integration in society is predicated by that exclusion and persecution.

The most salient example for me of that paradoxical integration and persecution is undocumented workers, in particular, undocumented agricultural workers, of whom there are many where I live in Santa Cruz County. We know this is sort of the dirty secret of agriculture. Many or most of agricultural field workers are undocumented and that industry would collapse...here are a group of people who are extremely well integrated in a particular segment of society, but they would never be mistaken for “assimilated” according to these more dominant definitions, particularly in sociology. I ended up calling this the paradox of assimilation in my book. We need to have a very capacious and flexible understanding of [assimilation], its contradictions, and the role of social structures and relationships of power. Read the full story here.
Faculty Research Fellows Chautauqua
November 4, 2021 | 4PM - 5:30PM PDT

Join us on November 4th for our autumn quarter Faculty Research Fellows Chautauqua. This book salon event will feature 2021-2022 fellow Ato Quayson focusing on his new book, Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature. Ato Quayson is the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English at Stanford. His book, Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature, examines tragedy and tragic philosophy from the Greeks through Shakespeare to the present day. Key themes addressed by Quayson include the links between suffering and ethics through postcolonial literature.

Quayson employs Shakespeare's Othello, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Tayeb Salih, Arundhati Roy, Toni Morrison, Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee to qualify and expand the purview and terms by which Western tragedy has long been understood. Drawing on texts such as The Poetics and The Nicomachean Ethics, and augmenting them with Frantz Fanon and the Akan concept of musuo (taboo), Quayson formulates a supple, insightful new theory of ethical choice and the impediments against it. This is a major book from a leading critic in literary studies.
FACULTY SEMINAR SERIES
Assimilation: An Alternative History
OCTOBER 28, 2021 | 12PM - 1:30PM PDT


Catherine S. Ramírez, chair of the Latin American and Latino Studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is a scholar of Mexican American history; race, migration, and citizenship; Latinx literature and visual culture; comparative ethnic studies; gender studies; and speculative fiction. She is the author of Assimilation: An Alternative History and The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory and she is a co-editor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship. She has also written for the New York TimesThe AtlanticPublic Books, and Boom California. From 2013 until 2018, she directed the Chicano Latino Research Center (now the Research Center for the Americas) at UC Santa Cruz.

Tomás Jiménez is a Professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. He is also Director of the Undergraduate Program on Urban Studies. His research and writing focus on immigration, assimilation, social mobility, and ethnic and racial identity. His forthcoming book, States of Belonging: Immigration Policies, Attitudes, and Inclusion uses survey data and in-depth interviews to understand how state-level immigration policies shape belonging among Latino immigrants, US-born Latinos, and US-born whites in Arizona and New Mexico.

EVENT LOCATIONS
You may join us in person in Building 360, Conference Room 361J, or via zoom. In person capacity will be limited to 40 persons. Masks are required indoors. See below to RSVP or join online.

LUNCHEON
Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees at 11:30am outside of Building 360. RSVP Required.

*HEALTH CHECK
This event is open to Stanford affiliates. Please be sure to bring your devices as you will need to show your health check status and sign in upon entry. Go to healthcheck.stanford.edu for your status.
CENTER NEWS & EVENTS
IMAGINING JUSTICE
American Indian Tribal Laws of Criminal Responsibility
NOVEMBER 5, 2021 | 12PM - 1:30PM PT (VIRTUAL)

Elizabeth A. Reese, Yunpoví (Tewa: Willow Flower) is a scholar of American Indian tribal law, federal Indian law, and constitutional law focusing on the intersection of identity, race, citizenship, and government structure. Her scholarship examines the way government structures, citizen identity, and the history that is taught in schools, can impact the rights and powers of oppressed racial minorities within American law.

Professor Reese is a nationally recognized expert on tribal law and federal Indian law and frequent media commentator on developments within the doctrine, particularly at the U.S. Supreme Court. Her scholarship on tribal law, constitutional law, popular sovereignty, and voting rights law has been published in Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, and Houston Law Review.

Previously, Professor Reese worked at the National Congress of American Indians where she supported tribal governments across the country as they implemented expanded criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians under the 2013 Violence Against Women Act. Her comprehensive five-year report on the tribal prosecutions thus far—which documented not only outcomes and unforeseen complications but the surge of tribal law innovation brought on by expanded jurisdiction—has been widely cited everywhere from Congress to Supreme Court briefs. Reese began her legal career as a civil rights litigator at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund where she led a desegregation case in one of the largest school districts in Florida and worked on the challenge to Alabama’s Voter ID law.

Abby Abinanti, Yurok Chief Judge, is an enrolled Yurok Tribal member, she holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of New Mexico School of Law, and was the first California tribal woman to be admitted to the State Bar of California. She was a State Judicial Officer (Commissioner) for the San Francisco Superior Court for over 17 years assigned to the Unified Family Court (Family/Dependency/Delinquency). She retired from the Superior Court in September 2011 and on July 31, 2014 was reappointed as a part-time Commissioner for San Francisco assigned to Dependency, and Duty Judge for that Court where she served until 2015. She has been a Yurok Tribal Court Judge since 1997 and was appointed Chief Tribal Court Judge in 2007, a position she held in conjunction with her Superior Court assignment until 2015.

This event is Co-Sponsored by Stanford Arts Institute, Native American Studies, the Center for Criminal Justice, and the Stanford Faculty Women's Forum.
JEWISH STUDIES EVENTS
BOOK TALK
A FORTRESS IN BROOKLYN:
RACE, REAL ESTATE, AND THE MAKING OF HASIDIC WILLIAMSBURG
JEWS OF COLOR INITIATIVE
BEYOND THE COUNT:
PERSPECTIVES AND LIVED EXPERIENCES OF JEWS OF COLOR
Wednesday, November 10 | 5p PT

SPEAKER: Nathaniel Deutsch, Professor & Baumgarten Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and co-author of A Fortress in Brooklyn
Wednesday, October 27 | 5p PT

SPEAKERS: Dr. Gage Gorsky, Research Consultant, Jews of Color Initiative and Ilana Kaufman, Executive Director, Jews of Color Initiative
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
Technology + Racial Equity Practitioner Fellowships
Deadline: November 5, 2021
The Digital Civil Society Lab (DCSL) and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) are accepting applications for the 2022 Non-Resident Practitioner Fellowship.
 
We are seeking social sector leaders who are working on ideas or projects that advance the safe, ethical, and effective use of digital resources in civil society. These projects might include: designing tools to protect civil society actors and advance racial justice, developing policy frameworks to govern the use of data, prototyping tools that mitigate bias in emerging technologies, or agroecological approaches that promote African food sovereignty.
 
The fellowship is designed to provide time, space, expertise, and financial support, to help turn ideas into prototypes or actions. The fellows will be working together with their cohort to support and inspire one another and benefit from the access to an intellectual community of Stanford University.
 
The submission deadline is Friday, November 5, 2021 at 5:00pm PT. 
 
Inquiries may be directed to rlapena@stanford.edu.
WE'RE HIRING!
Are you interested in supporting Stanford's hub for education and research on racial equity??
 
The Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity (CCSRE) seeks a Stanford graduate student to support a several programs at the Center including the Faculty Seminar Series, Faculty Research Fellowship, and the Center's digital media output. 8-10 hours/week.
 
Please email CCSRE Executive Director, Daniel Murray (ddmurray@stanford.edu) for more information.
SOCIAL MEDIA SPOTLIGHT
CAMPUS NEWS & EVENTS
Stanford charges committee with developing implementation recommendations for proposed new institute on study of race, ethnicity, and society
Through IDEAL & racial justice initiatives, Stanford plans to better address racial disparities.
BY CHELCEY ADAMI | October 22, 2021

Plans for a proposed institute at Stanford on the study of race, ethnicity and society are moving forward as a committee has been charged with developing implementation recommendations, Provost Persis Drell told the Faculty Senate Thursday. CCSRE Faculty Affiliate Tomás Jiménez (Soc) will co-chair the implementation committee.

What is Stanford's responsibility in a time
of racial reckoning?
BY JUDY TZU-CHUN WU ('92) | October 21, 2021

It is with great excitement and some disappointment that I approach my 30th reunion at Stanford. When I was a sophomore, I was arrested for engaging in protest, staging a takeover of then-President Donald Kennedy’s office. I did so with African American, American Indian, Asian American, Chicano/a and white allies. We had engaged in a year-long campaign to advocate for the hiring of ethnic studies faculty, the review of ethnic studies programs to bolster their resources, full-time deans for all the student centers that support students of color, among other
Image: Crystal Chen/The Stanford Daily
issues. These changes could have helped us find a home at Stanford, a place where we could flourish instead of being tokenized and marginalized.

In my mind, Stanford should be a place where people of diverse backgrounds could learn together. But what we were learning was inadequate. How much was the University supporting courses, faculty and programs that could teach us about race and cultural differences? These classes could help us understand how racial divisions have fundamentally structured our collective society and our respective identities. 

Most of the faculty and administrators at Stanford patronized us by agreeing with our general goal but not making any financial commitments. It was only after our collective arrest that Stanford leaders made substantive changes, including hiring the first two Asian American Studies professors. As an undergraduate student, I served on the search committee that appointed Professors Gordon Chang and David Palumbo-Liu. I was also on the committee that hired the first full-time dean for the Asian American Activities Center.

So, why am I disappointed in Stanford, a place that has in many ways molded my identity? Instead of flourishing, Asian American Studies has largely remained stagnant. READ THE FULL OPINION PIECE HERE.
Linda Youa Lee, Asian American Studies ’07,
inducted into Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame
Linda Youa Lee, associate director of the Chinese Progressive Association, is among the newly inducted members of the Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame.
BY NATALIE FEULNER | October 26, 2021

Stanford’s four ethnic community centers inducted five new members into the university’s Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame on Friday, an award honoring alumni with distinguished service to their communities and to society at large. Established in 1995, the ceremony is sponsored by the Stanford Alumni Association and held annually during the university’s Reunion Homecoming weekend.

Image Courtesy Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame
BLACK PANTHER PARTY PHOTO EXHIBITION
Presented by African & African American Studies
AROUND THE BAY
MUSIC EN MEMORIAM
A multicultural musical celebration of Día de los Muertos
Monday, November 1 | 6-7:30PM PT
San Jose Womén's Club

Music en Memoriam is a 60-minute performance experience showcasing Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration through the lens of different cultures. Original music with cultural representation from the Middle East, China, Japan, Vietnam, and Appalachian-America are fused together with music traditionally performed during Día de los Muertos.

This event is commissioned by MOSAIC and presented in partnership with San José Women's Club.
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Submit news, stories, & event information to drpearls@stanford.edu.
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