Convivencias across space and time within educational history: a critical race feminista approach

Abstract

This paper extends Critical Race Feminista Methodological (CRFM) approaches by contending that convivencias− the coexistence necessary for creating relationships in the field − are an integral part of engaging research collaborators within educational historical research. Drawing on oral histories with Chicana/o librarians, personal collections, and archival sources, I outline the convivencias I shared with librarians that span across spatial and temporal dimensions. These interactions were centered on recollecting, remembering, and learning about the activism within Latina/o/x chidlren’s literture and librarianship’s history. Convivencias across space were possible through diverse interactions, such as in-person meetings, phone conversations, video conferences, and emails. Convivencias across time are represented by the continuity of sustained efforts to advance social justice in librarianship across multiple decades. The conceptualization of convivencias across space and time emerged as a CRFM tool that aims to center seldomly documented narratives of activism essential for fostering connections, cultivating community memories, and nuancing historical educational research.

Keywords:

• Critical race feminista
• education history
• oral histories
• chicana/o librarians

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 Chicana/o is the term that research collaborators self-identify with. In later sections, the term Latinas/os/x is used to identify the larger pan ethnicity of individuals from Latino/a, Chicana/o, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central and South American, and other Spanish-speaking country origins. Latinx and Chicanx are contemporary terms used to be inclusive of gender identity however, the term is not widely used across literature, and primary sources and is inconsistent depending on generations.

2 The Online Archive of California, https://oac.cdlib.org, provides information about primary sources and collections throughout California.

3 Institutional archives are repositories of records created by an institution. In this paper, I differentiate institutional archives as the records that are housed in research centers, special collections in public libraries, university research libraries, etc. These collections are usually reserved for the use of researchers and often require special access.

4 Smithsonian Institution Archives: How to do Oral History, https://siarchives.si.edu/history/how-do-oral-history.

5 Ethnic Studies emerged in the 1960s from the activism of students who formed a multiracial coalition, the Third World Liberation Front at San Francisco State University. The students organized hunger strikes and demanded that ethnic studies be adopted into university programs and curricula with the goal of advancing the socio-political experiences of racial and ethnic communities often excluded from traditional U.S. history.

6 In 1968, students in East Los Angeles organized the Chicano Blowouts, also known as the walkouts, to demand quality education and to protest the pervasive racism within their schools.

7 The Chicano Periodical Index was an indexing system for Chicano periodical publications and was in print from 1967 to 1988.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorena Camargo Gonzalez

Lorena Camargo Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Undergraduate Studies in Education and Gender Equity at Sacramento State University. Her research undertakes a historical analysis of how civil rights movements shaped the activism of critical librarians and community organizations to advocate for anti-racism and social justice in children’s literature.