Announcement: AERA Presidential Session—The Fight for Ethnic Studies in Texas: De-colonizing the Curriculum

If you're attending this year's AERA Conference in San Antonio (April 27-May 1, 2017), consider attending our session that provides an overview of the current struggle for Ethnic Studies in the state of Texas.  Maybe you'll get some good ideas for your own locale.  Details below.

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

AERA Presidential Session:

The Fight for Ethnic Studies in Texas:  Decolonizing the Curriculum

Date: Thu, April 27, 2017

Time: 2:15pm-3:45pm

Location: Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, 303 A&B

This session focuses on the grassroots struggle for Ethnic Studies in Texas. Ours is a community-anchored effort spearheaded by scholars, researchers, students and faculty, associated with the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco statewide organization. The organization pursues Ethnic Studies legislation, even as it celebrates the movement’s monumental achievement manifest in a unanimous November, 2016 vote by the legendary conservative Texas State Board of Education(SBOE) to reject a deeply flawed, racist text. 

Presentations will address the research undergirding Ethnic Studies, the civil rights legacy of Ethnic Studies nationally and in Texas, and the mechanics of building a community-based coalition that led to the Texas SBOE’s rejection of a racist text and it is now advancing the agendas for Ethnic Studies curricula, teacher preparation, and policy. 

The presentations schematically link the extent, expression, and impact of subjugated histories and knowledge as a form of dismissal,ignoring decades of award-winning scholarship in history and Ethnic Studies.    

This problematic begs the larger question of possessive investment in the status quo that privileges Anglo-centric values embedded in the epistemologies of schooling.  The role of research as a tool to advocate for ethnic studies will also be discussed.

Below is a full listing of all participants and roles in the session:

Participants:

-Linda McSpadden McNeil, Rice University

-Juan Tejeda, Palo Alto College, San Antonio, Texas

-Emilio Zamora, University of Texas-Austin, Austin, Texas

-Angela Valenzuela, University of Texas-Austin, A

Moderator/Discussants:

-Martha P. Cotera, Independent Scholar and respected elder, Austin, Texas