Abstract
Drawing on the metaphor of the “1.5 generation” in studies of immigration, Decena proposes it as “the moment” in the life cycle of Latino Studies as a field because of how it pushes us to attend to continuities and departures in pedagogically inspired scholarly practice. This reflexión advances the following claims: first, that while the need to “document” US Latino populations persists given our political climate, inquiries in the field have also begun to grapple with the multiple significations and investments for community formation, institution-building and state regulation that pivot the term Latino; second, that movements to “document” or move away from documentary efforts in Latino Studies respond to the uneven influence of Latino Studies in traditional disciplines; and finally, that intellectual questions raised by initial and contemporary views of US Latino populations challenge us to center and explore transnational linkages with Latin America, thus prompting engagements and intellectual travel between Latino and Latin American studies.
Keywords
1.5 generation Latino studies Latin American studies immigration studiesNotes
Acknowledgement
My gratitude to my Rutgers colleagues for keeping ours one of the most sophisticated intellectual spaces for the pursuit of Latino and queer studies anywhere, and to my students, who remind me that worthwhile scholarship is so as long as it has heart. Special thanks to my best interlocutors, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Edgar Rivera-Colón.
References
- Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
- Basch, L., N. G. Schiller, and C. S. Blanc. 1992. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. New York: Gordon and Breach.Google Scholar
- Flores, J. 2000. From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
- Oboler, S. 1995. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
- Padilla, F. M. 1985. Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
- Rouse, R. 1991. “Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism.” Diaspora 1 no. 1 (Spring): 8–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Sánchez Korrol, V. 1983. From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1917–1948. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
- Stevens, E. P. 1965. “Mexican Machismo: Politics and Value Orientations.” Western Political Quarterly 18 (4): 848–857.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Treichler, P. 1999. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar