Session Abstract

During the 1960s and 1970s, Mexican American activists and advocates in the United States challenged socioeconomic inequity during the social movement known as the Chicana and Chicano Movement (CCM). The impetus for this social movement was a combination of a political desire to ensure equality and democracy in the United States and a pride in cultural heritage and respect for cultural diversity.  The CCM’s legacy, among other ways, has manifested itself in Chicana/o Studies programs in universities across the United States where students utilize knowledge on historic Mexican American civil rights struggles to understand their importance in the present day. The purpose of this teaching session is to draw from the CCM, Chicana/o Studies, and their now four-decade legacy, a means of better understand how cultural identity and cultural diversity are connected to human struggles to attain democracy and equality, as well as build community.  The panelists of this session will provide information about how to institute CCM and Chicana/o Studies into history curriculum so that students better understand the relationship between cultural diversity and democracy, as well as provide a means of incorporating diverse stories and lives from all over the United States into history classrooms.

            Each of the panelists will address an aspect of how pedagogy demonstrated by activists or activism can provide examples of how to implement lessons on culture, history, community, and civil rights in the classroom and curriculum.  José Luis Serrano Nájera will argue that various activists utilized a critical pedagogy to teach CCM participants about the relationship between cultural identity and heritage with struggles to challenge inequality and injustice, as well as demand human and civil rights. Irene Vásquez will discuss the use of oral history interviews from CCM activists’ children as a means to understand how the lessons of the CCM have been passed on among families.  She contends that these stories should be utilized in the classroom so that students can benefit from these diverse perspectives on the CCM.  Elizabeth González Cárdenas will discuss the effectiveness of Chicana/o Studies curriculum at a California University by using student testimonials that demonstrate that a culturally relevant education paired with a critical pedagogy has transformative effects on students.  Karla L. Alonso will discuss methods of incorporating archived CCM sources at the Chicano Research Collection at Arizona State University.  She will demonstrate ways of teaching students to find and analyze primary sources, as well as develop ways of interpreting CCM historical knowledge.

            During this teaching session discussion, Elizabeth González Cárdenas and José Luis Serrano Nájera will depict to the panel audience how teatro (theater) was used as critical pedagogy during the CCM and how it is used in the classroom at a California university.  Karla L. Alonso and Irene Vásquez will provide the panel audience with lesson plans that incorporate oral histories and archived sources.  Panel audience members will have the opportunity to partake in these pedagogical demonstrations and comment on their utility and effectiveness.