New Chicano Studies Head

New Chicano Studies Head

http://www.independent.com/news/2010/feb/15/new-chicano-studies-head/

UCSB Honors Feminist Scholar

Monday, February 15, 2010
By Rachel Mattovich

In the spring of 1969, at the height of what was known to as the
Chicano Renaissance, a group of Chicano activists and students
inspired by the culture, the struggle, and love for their own
community, met at the University of California, Santa Barbara seeking
to create recognition for, and a foundation for the higher education
of, their own people. Their project, El Plan de Santa Bárbara, was
centered on the idea that knowledge is power, and can create social
change. As a result of their activism, UCSB formed the Department of
Chicano and Chicana Studies. It has continued to pursue the goals of
recognition, inspiration, and innovation.

Flash forward to 2010: Aida Hurtado has been appointed as the
department's new chair, and has also received the honor being
appointed to the Luis Leal Endowed Chair. She came to UCSB from UC
Santa Cruz, where she began her career as a scholar 20 years ago,
after earning her master's and doctoral degrees from the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

A social psychologist, Hurtado focuses her research on race, class,
ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. The "bulk of my work is on feminist
theory, women's issues, and Latino Educational achievement," said.
Hurtado has written a copious amount of literature including Voicing
Chicana Feminisms: Young Women Speak Out on Sexuality and Identity,
The Color of Privilege: Three Blasphemies on Race and Feminism, and
Chicana/o Identity in a Changing U.S. Society: ¿Quién Soy? ¿Quiénes
Somos?, which she wrote with Patricia Gurin of the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her abundant awards and honors include this
year's Women of Color Psychologies Award from the Association of
Women in Psychology, recognizing her paper A View From Within and
From Without: The Development of Latina Feminist Psychology, which
she co-authored with graduate student Karina Cervantes. The paper
will also appear in The Handbook of U.S. Latino Psychology.

Hurtado also received the American Educational Research Association's
SAGE Award for distinguished contributions to gender equity in
education research.

"Professor Hurtado is a profoundly interdisciplinary scholar," said
her colleague Melvin Oliver, the SAGE Sara Miller McCune Dean of
Social Sciences. He said that her "merging of social psychology,
Chicano studies, and feminist studies has led to pioneering research
on social identity, intersectionality, and educational access."
Oliver added that the "application of her research to critical public
policy issues encompasses the spirit of the Luis Leal Endowed Chair.
I welcome her impressive abilities as a teacher, talent as a scholar,
and ability to bring fresh ideas to the department as chair."

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