Chicana/o Studies Oral History Project

About the project

Over 50 years ago, anthropologist Octavio Romano founded the publication, El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought, at UC Berkeley. Indeed, it was one of many actions of the time that sought to channel the educational aims of the Mexican American civil rights movement into the corridors of higher education. In the years that followed, scholars on campuses throughout California and the West built upon these aims, and ultimately established the academic discipline that became known as Chicana/o Studies.

This project seeks to commemorate that historical development and document the formation of Chicana/o Studies through in-depth interviews with the first generations of scholars who shaped it. Based on the selections of an advisory council composed of scholars from around the country, the project will feature oral histories with the prominent and pioneering scholars who helped build the discipline over the last five decades. These oral histories will take center stage in the two main products of this project. First, each interview will be transcribed and made available online below on the project page. Second, the oral histories will form the heart of a forthcoming documentary film series, tentatively titled, Chicana/o Studies: The Legacy of A Movement and the Forging of A Discipline.

Taken together, this project commemorates over 50 years of Chicana/o Studies, and significantly advances our understanding of the field’s development and evolution. Yet the development of Chicana/o Studies, as captured in both the oral history transcripts and film series, is more than just the story of a discipline. It is the story of a generation of Chicana/o scholars who broke through barriers to take their place in the nation’s universities, and spent their careers documenting the history and experience of their community. It is the story of educational reform, where scholars of color demanded that America’s curriculum equally include all its citizens. In many respects, it is also a story that highlights another side of the civil rights movement, one where actions in the classroom, rather than those in the streets, proved the long-lasting vector of social change.