Tejas Foco Awards

Tejas Foco

NACCS Tejas Foco website

 Semillas de Poder: Honoring Chicana/o/x  Movements & Mapping 21st Century Resistance

 February 14-16, 2019
Houston Community College System, Eastside Campus

“They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.” The popular rallying cry of resistance has been used recently in protests against family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border and to raise awareness for the Ayotzinapa 43, the 43 students who were disappeared in Iguala, Mexico in 2013. This conference’s theme, “semillas de poder” (or seeds of power), refers to this important slogan, but it also references the very seeds of our Latinx or Chicanx protest history, historical representations, and realities. El Movimiento of the 1960s and 1970s itself was inspired by the pre-Columbian Aztlán, which remains an important symbol and concept for studying our history and enacting change. Leaders and communities asserted their power to gain rights during El Movimiento and they continue to motivate current social movements. Important concepts of La Raza or Latinidad also continue to be useful and inspiring, but sometimes they invite critique as political goals change and groups continue to question borders of land, nationality/nationalities, and identity.

The 2019 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies--Tejas Foco conference is an interdisciplinary conference. We invite submissions that offer insight into past, current, and future strategies of empowerment and resistance within new configurations and redefinitions of self and community, the dynamics of El Movimiento and how we tell our stories, reclaiming our histories, and defining our realities in the 21st century.

We encourage submissions that address to the following questions and topics:

• How have Chicana Feminisms challenged, supported, or changed the idea of poder?
• What kinds of remembrance of past protest and cultural movements are most effective for reclaiming power today? What can we learn from how we memorialize or study the movements of the past?
• How does “semillas de poder” reference land rights?
• What role does history and the practice of “honoring” play in social & political movements and their objectives to educate, empower, and bring about change?
• What iterations of the Chicano/a/x movement formed in Tejas and in what ways did they influence the broader movement?
• How has the LGBTQIA community informed our understanding of resistance?
• How are the terms Chicanx and Latinx a specific and new form of resistance that stems from the semillas of previous forms of resistance?
• What are some of the legal, academic, and community-based avenues of empowerment and resistance for the Chicano/a/x community?
• How do these different approaches work together? In what ways, do they each bring a unique set of techniques of resistance and empowerment?

We welcome paper presentations and panel submissions, exhibitions, performances, workshops, poetry readings, and other forms of expressions that offer insight on past, current, and future strategies of empowerment and resistance. We also welcome proposals that address the Tejano/a/x experience in general but do not necessarily fall under the conference theme.

Strategies of Resistance: Dismantling Legalized and Ideological Violence against Our Communities

February 16-17, 2018

Texas Lutheran University, Seguin Texas

The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco Program Committee invite proposals for sessions on strategies of resistance that dismantle legalized and ideological violence against our communities.  In our current political climate, legislation aimed at curtailing the rights of Chicanx/Latinx and other marginalized communities continues to intensify as xenophobic, anti-immigrant, homophobic, sexist, and racist agendas and ideologies make their ways into our classrooms, community organizations, and public spaces. Under the threat of rescinding DACA legislation, the implementation of SB4, mass deportation, and the construction of a border wall, our communities face physical and symbolic violence on a daily basis. Historically, Chicanx/Latinx communities in Tejas have also engaged in strategies of resistance when faced with legal and ideological violence.  From countering Texas Ranger and KKK violence with grassroots organizing and mutualistas, to opposing unfair labor practices through strikes and coalition building, community resistance has been central to the Chicanx/Latinx experience in Tejas.

We are interested in broad participation and perspectives as we look to find common methods and theoretical approaches to inform our strategies of resistance. We welcome proposals for panels, papers, round-table discussions, and alternative session formats that allow for audience participation and community engagement.  Topics that may be examined include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Transnational and global perspectives
• Intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality
• Social justice struggles through comparative frameworks
• Contemporary and past strategies of resistance
• Legal avenues for resistance/change
• Mentoring students to engage in social transformation
• LGBTQ histories and struggles of resistance
• Decoloniality and empowerment

Relational Histories, Inter-Ethnic Alliances:   Chican@/x Coalition Politics in Tejas

Texas A&MUniversity, College Station 
February 23-25, 2017

The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco Program Committee invites proposals for sessions on the approaches, challenges, and expansive terrain of inter- ethnic alliances and politics in Tejas. We welcome proposals for panels, roundtable discussions, individual papers and alternative session formats that allow for audience participation and community engagement. Proposals that fall outside the theme of the conference, but that speak to the Chican@/x experience in Tejas, will be considered as well. The Program Committee is excited to share that Texas A&M University will serve as the local host for the 2017 conference, which will be held February 23-25, 2017.

The conference situates race as a starting point for examining the multiple oppressions that have governed life in Texas. Building on the idea that citizenship, sexuality, gender, labor organizing, class, pop culture, and religion serve as modalities through which race is lived and performed in Texas, the program committee invites papers that explore political moments of juncture and disjuncture where groups organized across race and culture.

With an eye toward examining the relational nature of racializations (the idea that racialization takes place not only in relation to whiteness but also in relation to other marginalized groups such as Central Americans, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Asian Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans) the program committee seeks individual papers or complete panels of 3 papers (4 max) that highlight the moments of political collaboration

as well as the moments of political friction, and the ways in which the rapidly changing demographics of the state require us to (re)imagine Chican@/x studies in Tejas.

Chican@/x Studies is an expansive and growing field. Our collective histories, our testimonios, offer stories of Mexican and Mexican American life in Texas that illuminate the broader realities of racism, heterosexism, violence, colonialism, and nationalisms. As Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, we have a history that has struggled alongside other aggrieved groups and pushed back against the indignities of our oppressors, even as the uneven political ground that has rooted these movements has challenged notions of a collective “we.” There is an urgency today for scholarship to reflect the history of inter-ethnic organizing, to better explain the ways racism takes place in Texas, and how Chican@/x communities — from El Paso to Dallas/Fort Worth to the Rio Grande Valley — are engaged in political and artistic struggles that reflect the dignity, justice, and the soul of our communities. 

All submissions should be sent via emailto naccstejas2017@gmail.com and are due by December 1, 2016.

February 18-20, 2016
Lone Star College-Kingwood
Kingwood, Texas

Preserving Traditions, Stories, and Customs of the Mexican and Mexican American Community

The 2016 NACCS Tejas Foco conference is an interdisciplinary conference that is calling for submissions that offer insight into traditions, oral history, customs, dichos, folklore, language, food, religion, literature, music, education, folk art, Chicana/o history and how they affect our everyday lives and identity.

We encourage submissions that seek to address the following, but not limited to, questions:

• What causes us to move away from these customs and traditions?
• How does assimilation into American mainstream culture affect these customs and traditions and how has our culture changed over time?
• What can we do, if anything, to stop the disappearance of customs and traditions? Or is disappearance inevitable or necessary to move forward?
• How does the Mexican and Mexican American culture influence American national and local cultural practices?
• What is the role that folklore and public culture play in social movements? How do social movements influence Chicano/Mexicano culture?
• How does gender, sexuality and LGBT analyses offer new insights to understanding customs and traditions?

We welcome submissions that offer studies on gender roles, sexuality, and the LGBT community in the Mexican and Mexican American culture. We welcome paper presentations and panel submissions, exhibitions, performances, workshops, poetry readings, and other forms of expressions on the origins of these traditions and customs and how they shaped Mexican Americans in the past and continue to shape our present. We also welcome proposals that address the Tejano experience in general and that does not necessarily fall under the conference theme.

2015

Putting More Community in Community College and Beyond: Scholars, Professors, Writers, Teachers, Students and Families Unite to Open Higher Education to Our Youth

Lone Star College-North Harris
Houston, Texas
February 26-28, 2015

http://www.lonestar.edu/northharris.htm

www.TejasFoco2015.org

At the NACCS 2014 Tejas Foco the Chicana poetry group WAKE-UP! thrilled the Noche Cultural Open Mic, as well as the conference panels.

At the 2015 conference business meeting, students lobbied for more involvement and their own plenary. We were happy to comply.

The conference inspired, instructed, and energized us to then lead a statewide coalition to demand and win more support for Ethnic Studies at the Texas State Board of Education. Now, we invite you to take this work to the next level.

The NACCS 2015 Tejas Foco Conference Committee invites proposals for papers, panels, exhibits, roundtable, film screenings, readings, workshops for teachers, or workshops or parents, or students, and/or creative pieces that will share and/or examine areas of concern and/or positivity that are housed within the Culture of Higher Education. We also want to encourage policy makers, administrators, and politicians to submit panel ideas, and/or be part of our Public Policy Plenary.

Examples of panels for this conference are: The Arts Community within Chicana/o Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and the LGBTQ Community within Chicana/o Studies; The Dream Act and Chicana/o Studies; Texas Institutional Violence and Chicana/o Studies; and Community Activism and the 21st Century Classroom; How to Implement Mexican American Studies in the classroom; How to Implement Mexican American Studies at Your High School; What Parents Need to Know About Cultivating a Scholar; How Can Mexican American Studies Help Families Progress; Statistics on Helping Our Youth Succeed in School.

We strongly encourage students to submit their work, both graduate and undergraduate. Also, as Houston is the home of the Librotraficante Movement, we strongly encourage presentations on Librotraficante Studies. We promise to deliver the cutting edge and brilliant scholarly presentations the Tejas Foco is known for. We also promise to include more students and more families ever before.

Chicana/o Studies in Tejas: Transforming our Communities
Northwest Vista College, San Antonio, Tejas February 20-22, 2014
http://www.alamo.edu/nvc/tejasfoco/

Chicana/o Studies is a field of study that provides students with a comprehensive education. However, some institutions continue to remain reluctant to embrace such programs thus adding to the negations and negotiations within this vital institutional space. The 2014 NACCS Tejas Foco Conference wishes to provide a spaces where teachers, students, researchers, creative writers, artists, activist, and grassroots leaders can come together to produce and promote ideas and knowledge about how Chicana/o Studies can continue to build stronger foundations within the Culture of Higher Education.

NACCS 2014 Tejas Foco Call For Papers:
The NACCS 2014 Tejas Foco Conference Committee invites proposals for papers, panels, exhibits, roundtable, film screenings, and/or creative pieces that will share and/or examine areas of concern and/or positivity that are housed within the Culture of Higher Education. Examples of panels for this conference are: The Arts Community within Chicana/o Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and the LGBTQ Community within Chicana/o Studies; The Dream Act and Chicana/o Studies; Texas Institutional Violence and Chicana/o Studies; and Community Activism and the 21st Century Classroom.

For more information, please visit the Tejas Foco Conference site at: www.alamo.edu/nvc/tejasfoco/

Chican@ Studies ¡Ahora!  Community Based Pedagogies, Scholarship, and Activism
University of Texas—Pan American, Edinburg, Texax
February 21-23, 2013
http://naccs-tejas-2013.blogspot.com

Call for Proposals

Recent attacks on Chican@ and Ethnic Studies programs are reminders of the need for spaces to produce knowledge in, about, and for our communities. This conference provides an environment to encounter and engage recent work by those who situate their teaching, research, writing, creative activities, and advocacy on and beyond an academic campus. This call for proposals centers on the ways in which academic research, creative activities, and pedagogy can directly affect and become embedded in these communities.

The conference seeks to bring together scholars, teachers, artists, activists, and other individuals or groups dedicated to Chican@ Studies and Latin@ Studies. With a trans-/extra-disciplinary approach, the 2013 annual conference will represent areas of concern in Chican@, Latin@, Ethnic, Gender, and Critical Race Studies, History, Philosophy, Art, Literature, Theatre and Performance, Music, Social Psychology, Education, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Economics, and other approaches concerned with social justice. Proposals on the methods and outcomes of participatory or action research are particularly encouraged. The program will feature panels on Human Rights, Critical Pedagogies and Epistemologies, Native Issues, Decolonization / Democratization, Gender and LGBTQ Issues, Race and Racialization, Politics, Language, Transnationalism and Immigration. Those with experience as students, teachers, activists, scholars, artists, and other community members are invited to submit the following types of proposals: panels, papers, performances, posters/exhibits, creative activities, testimonios, round tables, film screenings, workshops, and other innovative presentations.

Professional development workshops related to the conference theme will be offered as part of pre-conference activities on Thursday, February 21.

  2012

This Is Us: Como Nos Ven, Como Nos Vemos Changing Chican@ Identity in the 21st Century
Texas State University, San Marcos - March 1-3, 2012

Chicanas and Chicanos are a highly diverse people. Today many of our scholars are engaged in wide-ranging research across disciplinary fields continuously adding to our collective knowledge of who we are. Our artists, workers, professionals, policymakers, grassroots and religious leaders, and others within our communities are doing important work in constructing our diverse cultural realities. Our scholarship and rich community experiences continue to reflect us as a people with many intercultural and transnational complexities. Across Tejas alone, many differences exist, yet more numerous are the commonalities binding us together. As peoples native to this land with a long history of struggle for justice and equality in society, our understanding of how we see ourselves and how others see us has grown and matured.

The 2012 NACCS Tejas Regional Conference Committee therefore invites proposals for papers, panels, exhibits, performances, and other creative means for addressing the many ways we see ourselves as well as how others see us—in the past, present, and our rapidly changing future. We invite Chican@ perspectives on the varied situations where we find ourselves located socially, culturally, educationally, historically, politically—rhetorically. We invite perspectives which best seek to illustrate the conference theme “This Is Us.”

While the primary theme for the conference centers on analyzing and reflecting on Chicana and Chicano perceptions of ourselves, additional topics related to the Chicana/o, Latina/o, or Mexican American experience are also highly welcomed.

We hereby invite you to Texas State University, San Marcos where we can all share our knowledge. Ultimately, it is we who determine who we are, como nos vemos. In myriad ways we are our community's storytellers, teachers, organizers, writers, leaders, and students young and old. With great hope for the future, we seek your voice and participation in elucidating scholarly and rhetorical strategies for gaining a wider, deeper, and richer understanding of all raza in Tejas.

Due Date: Please e-mail 250-word proposals by December 18, 2011 to Dr. Jaime Armin Mejía at jm31@txstate.edu. We welcome questions, comments, and suggestions regarding the conference.

2011 Regional Conference  

"De Diosa a Hembra to Chicana: Celebrating the Last 40 Years of Chicana Activism."

South Texas College, McAllen, Tejas
24-26 February 2011

 Pasado, Presente, y Futuro: Forty Years of Chicana and Chicano Studies in Texas

The University of Texas at Austin
February 25-27, 2010

The year 2010 marks the 40^th anniversary of the formal establishment of Mexican American Studies in the academy in Texas. Since the early 1970s, many approaches have been developed and employed in the field of Chicana and Chicano Studies, some focusing on political economy, others on cultural studies, some focusing on the specificity of the Tejano experience, others focusing on how Texas fits into the larger experience of Mexican Americans in the United States and linkages to Mexico and Latin America. Chicana and Chicano Studies in Texas has drawn from many intellectual approaches and fields, and struggled to expand the definition of the academy, activism, and intellectual life.

The goal of the 2010 NACCS-Tejas Foco Regional Conference is to examine questions around a Texas School" of Chicana and Chicano Studies. We invite scholars of Chicana and Chicano Studies, members of NACCS, and the general public to submit proposals for papers, panels, or performances that engage the question of whether there is (or is not) a Texas-based approach to Chicana and Chicano Studies. Submissions may look at the past, present, and future of Chicana and Chicano Studies in <st1:state w:st="on">Texas to outline such a "Texas School" of thought or may call into question the very idea of such a proposition. The conference will also consider whether there is more than one school of thought within Texas.

Proposals for papers, panels, or performances should include a 250-word abstract (maximum length) and must include full contact information. Paper proposals can come from individuals or co-authors. Panel proposals must list all participants who have agreed to serve on the panel. Performance proposals must provide technical requirements. The deadline for submissions is January 8, 2010.

All proposals must be submitted by e-mail attachment to Luis Guevara at lvg@mail.utexas.edu.

2009
Interdisciplinarity Unbound: The State and Status of Chicana/o Studies in Texas

The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) will be site for the Tejas Foco Regional Conference, which will take place February 26 – 28, 2009. With a community-academy partnership, this conference promises to examine a multisided view of the issues affecting our community, as we look at the state and status of Chicana and Chicano Studies in Texas.

We call on all academics and interested individuals to submit presentations, performances, or exhibits for consideration.

This year’s regional conference will be an exciting and dynamic congregation of the alliances among our common interests.

Call for Papers, Presentations and Exhibits
Regional Conference

Submissions of papers, panels, workshops, and roundtable presentations that examine the past, current status, and future of Chicana and Chicano Studies in Tejas are requested. Focus may be on the (1) historical legacy and interdisciplinary trajectory of our discipline; (2) a critical examination and reflection of our interactions and relationships between Chicana and Chicano Studies and other Ethnic Studies programs, including, but not limited to, Latina and Latino Studies, African American Studies, and Native American Studies; and (3) given the organizational design in which our discipline has evolved, with its CMAS structure, and the affiliate approach to imparting disciplinary knowledge, we also encourage discussions about the ways in which our respective units are organized. All papers that engage the interdisciplinary topics of Chicana and Chicano Studies are welcome.

Please submit your proposals no later than January 5, 2008, to Marie.Miranda@utsa.edu or Josephine.MendezNegrete@utsa.edu. Acceptance notices will be sent via email by January 15, 2009. Questions should be sent to Marie “Keta” Miranda or Josephine Méndez-Negrete at the aforementioned emails.

Mi Educación es la Causa: Chicana and Chicano Pedagogy in the 21st Century

NACCS-Tejas Regional Conference
South Texas College, McAllen, Tejas
28 February - 1 March 2008

The 2008 NACCS Tejas foco regional conference steering committee is excited to announce that both Ms. Martha Cotera and Dr. Rodolfo Acuña have agreed to serve as keynote speakers. Both scholars will be discussing the past, present, and future of Chicana/o pedagogy.  Please join us in welcoming both scholars to our conference. 

<st1:date w:st="on" year="2008" day="14" month="1">Program for the regional conference is now available.

Send questions to Victor Gomez at vgomez@southtexascollege.edu