A Chicana Feminist Approach to Democratizing the Academy: The Case of EGTSS

Abstract (English)

This paper examines the academy as a site of struggle for feminist decolonization and democratization. I use my experience as a cultural anthropologist and faculty member for 27 years at a community college in Tucson, Arizona, where half of the general population as well as students are Mexican ethnic. The paper will briefly contextualize the comparatively recent presence of Mexican Americans/Chicanx in higher education in the United States with a brief history of the exclusion and marginalization we experienced until the Chicana/o civil right movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. The paper will then focus on the efforts and activities of the Ethnic, Gender & Transborder Studies (EGTSS) Dept. at Pima Community College, of which I am co-founder and Head, to institutionalize Mexican American Studies and other Ethnic and Gender Studies disciplines over the past eight years. Key to this effort has been the development of community support through various initiatives, including annual educational events that bring together the broader community with the academic community to break down barriers and walls to the inclusion of Mexican Americans/ Chicanx in higher education as fundamental to decolonizing and democratizing institution.