UO Today

on March 10, 2015

"Speaking for Themselves: Rancheras and Respectability in Mexican California, 1800-1850"

Yvette Saavedra, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and 2021–22 OHC Faculty Research Fellow

My book project  explores how ideas of gender, sexuality, and nationalism took shape in early nineteenth century Los Angeles. In Mexican Los Angeles, women who violated social ideals of gender honor and propriety, were labeled with the letters MV—which stood for “mala vida,” or bad lives,  as a punishment for their alleged illicit behaviors and transgressions of social norms. Although intended as a mark of shame, I regard  la mala vida as a form of proto-feminism that allowed women to live outside immediate patriarchal supervision and helped them negotiate their social positions and identities. Rather than focusing solely on women regarded as  honorable  mothers of the nation, I examine the so-called “bad women” who rejected imposed ideas of feminine propriety to show how they redefined ideas of womanhood, nationhood, and motherhood on their own terms.

Daniel Martinez HoSang, Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, and American Studies at Yale University (formerly at University of Oregon), discusses his numerous publications including the forthcoming "Under the Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that Covid Lays Bare" (Haymarket Press, Spring 2022, co-edited with Kimberle Crenshaw). HoSang will give a virtual talk "A Wider Type of Freedom: How Struggles for Racial Justice Liberate Everyone" on Wednesday, December 1, 2021. Register: ohc.uoregon.edu

Michelle McKinley, Law, and 2021–22 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

“Bound Biographies” charts the travel experiences of Afro-Iberians who left the peninsula in service of their owners, or as freed itinerant persons as they forged their lives in the Americas in the first two centuries of Spanish expansion and settlement in the New World. The project examines Afro-Iberian life on the Iberian Peninsula, traces Afro-Iberian travelers as they relocate in various port towns in the Americas, and follows their return to the peninsula after living for considerable periods of time in the New World. “Bound Biographies” is a geographically ambitious, multi-sited project that uses the sources to reconstruct the experience of black mobility that was not forced. It explores the lives of black travelers in an early diaspora that was not exclusively tied to—yet indelibly shaped by—the transatlantic slave trade.

Aris Hall, coordinator of the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center at the University of Oregon, talks about the resources available at the center and how she supports Black students at the UO socially and academically.

Adrian Parr, Dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon, is a transdisciplinary scholar whose work intersects in Philosophy, Aesthetic Theory, and environmentalism. She discusses her recent books and films, as well as what attracted her to the University of Oregon in spring of 2021.

Kristen Bell, Law, and 2021–22 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

My fellowship project focuses on writing a book proposal for work in philosophy of punishment. The book will address questions about justice and punishment through the lens of narratives from people who are currently incarcerated. The chapters of the book will emerge through iterative correspondence with people who were sentenced to life terms as juveniles and whom I’ve previously taught in prison. I seek to explore philosophical questions around punishment in a way that is accessible to the public and helps spur interest in reform of the criminal legal system.

There are estimates that the U.S. population could reach 438 million by 2050. Where will these people be housed? What kind of metropolitan regions will they live in? Will these regions be sustainable or equitable or even livable? Is it only a dream that we can create sustainable, healthy, resilient, green, and equitable cities? Christina Rosan considers these questions in her talk.

Christina Rosan is an associate professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. Her forthcoming book (co-authored with Stephen Wheeler) "Reimagining Sustainable Cities" will be published by the University of California Press in December 2021.

Sameer Pandya, associate professor of Asian American Studies at U.C. Santa Barbara, is author of "The Blind Writer: Stories and a Novella" and a novel "Members Only." He discusses the novel and reads a passage. Pandya will give a virtual reading on Nov. 10, 2021 as a guest of the UO's Creative Writing Program. Register: crwr.uoregon.edu

Alicia Salaz discusses her work as an academic librarian in United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as her last position at Carnegie Mellon University. She talks about what drew her to work at the University of Oregon and the strengths of the UO Libraries.