The Newberry Library Borderlands and Latino Studies Seminar, February 15, 2013: Lee Bebout and John McKiernan-Gonzalez

3 to 5 pm

“Chicana/o Studies and the Whiteness Problem or Towards a Mapping of Whiteness on the Border”
Lee Bebout, Arizona State University

This paper calls for the creation of a focused and sustained dialogue between Chicana/o studies and critical whiteness studies.  I argue that Chicanas/os have had a historically unique and complex relationship to whiteness.  Ultimately, this essay will lay the foundation for the broader project through identifying the “whiteness problem” of Chicana/o studies, exploring the discontinuities between the fields of Chicana/o studies and critical whiteness studies, exposing the unique relationship between Chicanas/os and whiteness, unearthing a “Chicana/o school” of whiteness studies, postulating a dynamic set of practices in which whiteness is fashioned beside and against representations of Mexicans, Chicanas/os, and the border.

“Who Gets to Be an American Doctor: The Case of Latino Texas, 1900-1945”
John McKiernan-Gonzalez, University of Texas at Austin

Commentator: Benjamin Johnson, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee