The competing visions during the Spanish, Mexican and American periods of how land should be used, and how those ideas affected the creation of racial and cultural hierarchies in early California, will be the focus of the next Chican@ History Lecture on Tuesday, May 24, at Cal State San Bernardino.
“Competing Visions: Politics of Race and Ethnicity in the California Borderland, 1771-1890,” presented by Yvette J. Saavedra, will take place from noon-2 p.m. at CSUSB’s John M. Pfau Library, room PL-4005. The lecture is free and open to the public; parking is $6 at the university.
This will be the final event for the academic year in this series.
Saavedra’s talk is part of a larger study that examines how competing visions of optimal land use during the Spanish, Mexican, and American periods affected the creation of racial and cultural hierarchies in California in the late 1700s into the late 1800s. The lecture will focus on how colonialism created a specific understanding of place and people, and the racialization of indigenous and Mexican populations in the region.
Saavedra will join the CSUSB Department of History as an assistant professor in fall 2016. She is a first-generation college graduate who earned her B.A. in history and Chicana/o Studies from Pitzer College. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas, El Paso.
With her research interest in 19th century U.S. and borderlands history, Saaverdra’s work examines issues of race, power, identity, colonialism, nationalism and historical erasure/memory. Her work contributes to the fields of U.S. history, Chicano/a history, borderlands history, and the history of gender and sexuality.
Her first book, “Competing Visions: Racial and Ethnic Identity and Land Use in a California Borderland, 1771-1890,” is a social and cultural history detailing how Spanish, Mexican, American and indigenous groups’ competing visions of land use affected the formation of racial and cultural identity in Pasadena, Calif., from 1771 to 1890.
The Chican@ History Lecture Series was conceived and organized by the students of the CSUSB History Club and Phi Alpha Theta history honors society, led by Rocio Gomez, Maria Figueroa, Brian Ayala and Jasmyn Murrell.
The series began in fall 2015 and included programs featuring National Humanities Medal recipient and UC Irvine history professor Vicki Ruiz, historian Tomás Summers Sandoval of Pomona College, political scientist Armando Navarro of UC Riverside, as well as regional scholars of art, music and other topics, in a total of eight events. It is made possible with help from the CSUSB Department of History, the University Diversity Committee, the Teaching Resource Center and the CSUSB John M. Pfau Library.
For more information please contact Rocio Gomez at gomer329@coyote.csusb.edu.
About California State University, San Bernardino: Set in the foothills of the beautiful San Bernardino Mountains, CSUSB is a preeminent center of intellectual and cultural activity in inland Southern California. Celebrating its 50thanniversary in 2015-2016, CSUSB serves more than 20,000 students each year and graduates about 4,000 students annually. For more information about Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Strategic Communication at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu.