Celebrating Our New Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) Minor
Written by Lucia Leon
The 2022–2023 academic year marked an important year for Dominican Latinx students, faculty and staff. During the year we saw the establishment of La Vida Dominican, a federally funded program awarded following our new Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) designation. In Fall 2022, we launched the Latin American and Latino Studies minor at Dominican University of California!
The LALS minor emerged from a need to uplift our DUC students and support the local Latinx community as they address pressing social issues. Through our two LALS core courses, LALS 3000 Latino Studies and U.S. Community Context and LALS 3001 Latino Studies and U.S. Social Issues, our learning was centered on the lived experience of Latinx communities locally, nationally and globally. We deepened our understanding of U.S. born Latino communities and immigrant groups as we discussed the work of critical scholars across the various disciplines of ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, psychology, migration studies, gender studies, LGBTQ studies, geography, history, theater, philosophy, education, law and public policy. We engaged with podcasts and films on reproductive health, immigration, mass incarceration, educational equity, farm workers, labor organizing, houselessness, social movements, and transnational families. In the spring we engaged with theater of the oppressed, teatro campesino and wrote our own play, La Lucha por la Vivienda. As we examined Latinx history and culture, we focused our first year on key social inequalities, justice movements, and community efforts and shape the everyday life of Latinos in the United States and San Rafael.
Our classroom space and community-engagement with predominantly Spanish-speaking communities, gave us the space to reflect on our own language use. As predominantly heritage Spanish speakers our discussions on the use of Spanish, English, Spanglish, and dialectos allowed us to explore complex ties between our linguistic identity and ethnic identity. In the community, we were able to utilize our bilingual and bicultural skills to immerse ourselves and to gain confidence as learners and co-creators. As a cohort, these important conversations and efforts allowed us to build a greater sense of belonging as we supported each other to express our ideas, goals and motivations.
Through a cohort model our LALS students partnered with Voces del Canal, a coalition of Latina/o resident leaders from San Rafael. Together, our LALS students and I, joined and Voces del Canal leaders and Canal Alliance staff for their monthly organizing meetings. Witnessing first-hand how organizing adapts and takes shape, our students were a critical part of community led initiatives. Through this long-standing service-learning partnership, our students supported Voces del Canal on key social issues including, Neighborhood Infrastructure through community clean-up days; Education, Arts and Sports through their participation in youth soccer and art workshops for families; and Fair Housing through community advocacy work to support tenant’s rights and housing policy. In the spring, our LALS students also collaborated with Canal Alliance’s ESL adult education program, RotaCare’s healthcare clinic, and Novato’s Reading Buddies to enhance library services.
As we moved beyond our classroom and into learning spaces across DUC, San Rafael and Bay area, here are a couple highlights from our Dia de los Muertos celebration and Latinx Educational Resiliency book launch.
Dia de los Muertos
On November 1, our LALS class co-hosted a Dia de los Muertos event with Dr. Morales’ English course students. Together, our faculty and students built a bright and beautiful altar to honor the cultural tradition celebrated across Latin America and in the United States. With flor de muerto, papel picado, and candlelight illuminating the beautiful evening, we engaged in a practice of community building. Centrally located in front of Caleruega Dining Hall, students, faculty, staff and family members gathered to share stories and to enjoy tamales, cafecito and pan de muerto.
As part of our altar making process, our LALS Students chose to honor seven immigrant children who died while in U.S. detention centers. Our LALS students shared the story of their immigrant child with great care and a call for immigrant justice. Our Dia de los Muertos event, was a successful celebration of Latinx culture and traditions for both those who are familiar with the celebration and those who enjoyed it for the first time. Join us next November as we establish this yearly celebration on our DUC campus!
Latinx Educational Resilience Celebration at USF
In April 2023, we were invited to the book release party and celebration of Latinx Educational Resilience, for The Latinx Guide to Graduate School, by Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales and Magdalena Barrera. Our students were able to meet the authors of the book, guest panelists, and share food and a supportive space with over 100 students, professors, and family members. As a Latinx profesora, participating as a panelist marked a special moment. Surrounded by a network of support, I shared my journey through graduate school, the trials and tribulations and the intentions and motivations that led me to the professorship at Dominican. Through the sharing of our experiences, with moments of laughter and tears, we saw each other fully and celebrated our connection as Latinx students and profes. Though this event, we were also reminded that we form part of a much larger community of Latinos/xs in higher education.
“This experience [USF book launch] was more than I could ask for. I don’t think I’ve been in a place with as many people living through the same experiences I am. They all made me feel as though nothing I have felt has just been on me, that the impostor syndrome, homesickness, lonely days, overwhelming, etc. wasn’t just me it is something we all feel. I thought that everyone who spoke told me the truth how academia is hard, how our roots and our past make it even harder, but how it is truly worth it in the end. I think that this was very important for us to talk about and being in a room with people trying to achieve the same goals as you is very important for our individual mental health.” — Dani Aguirre, LALS Student
As a new faculty member at Dominican, developing our Latin American and Latino Studies minor and forming part of La Vida Dominican has augmented my own sense of belonging as a Latinx, immigrant and first-generation college professor. Through a collective and community-engaged learning approach, the minor has served as a critical space to center the lived experience of students and community, our Spanish language and cultural heritage skills, our written thought and dialogue, and the various other forms of knowing and speaking that we untame (a la Gloria Anzaldúa). We engaged in a practice of uplifting each other and community led justice work that connect past and present, especially during this critical moment in U.S. history.
As I reflect on the momentous year we have had, I hope that you will join me in a moment to honor and celebrate! Our presence in education, in the university, is one that we owe a great debt to long history of community organizing and activism, our communities, and our families and champions that supported us and our work along the way. Let us also celebrate in the many goals we accomplished this year, all of the hard work, the connections we built with each other and community members.
Dear reader, I hope you will join us next year as we expand our LALS minor, programming, events and courses! I leave you with a few reflection about our minor by one of our inaugural students, Liliana Valle-Contreras, a global Public Health major and Latin American and Latino studies minor.
“I always knew I wanted to study and be a part of something I can connect back to home and what I consider my community… this was an opportunity for me to be able to connect back to a community I see myself in, especially in a space where you can feel very out of place in a white institution. It definitely is a community for me, where our families are from a similar background, people I can relate to, even my professor, so it was finding a community for me.” — Liliana Valle-Contreras
“This minor really helps me look at this [LALS] lens and being able to include this — what I’ve learn and what we learn and talk about and the things we connected to community — to my major. Being in public health, obviously we see these issues, but with this minor I have been able to go to community and see the issues firsthand, and then when I read about it in my major classes, it’s like, well I’ve seen that and I am able to connect that. So, that also feels like it fits so well.” — Liliana Valle-Contreras
Dr. Lucia Leon, is Assistant Professor of Latino Studies and Social Justice. Dr. Leon obtained her PhD from UCLA in Chicana/o and Central American Studies.
As an educational equity and immigrant justice advocate, Dr. Leon forms part of La Vida Dominican as a member of the steering committee, Community Engaged Faculty Fellow and faculty facilitator for the Avanza Bridge program. This summer, she will be teaching the Avanza Bridge course LASL 1020: La Lucha Sigue: Educated, Proud and Powerful. In the Fall 2023, Dr. Leon will teach LALS 3000 Latino Studies and U.S. Community Context and PHIL 2106 Ethics of Citizenship and Immigration.
