|
View the H-Ethnic Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Ethnic's January 2013 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Ethnic's January 2013 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Ethnic home page.
I'd like to weigh in with a suggestion that may seem unwieldy but I think answers some concerns. "Latino/a" is the preferred term for most academic studies. As a professor of U.S. Latina/o and Chicano/a studies, however, I must always keep in mind that there are significant differences between Chicano/a studies--some of them historical, dating from the formation of Chicano/a Studies in the late 1960s and 1970s--and the historical backgrounds and experiences of the groups normally put under the "Latina/o" umbrella (Cuban-American, Nuyorican, Puerto Rican, Dominican-American, etc.). Therefore, I am always careful to use both terms in my work here at the University of Florida, and I personally always put "U.S." in front to underscore the difference between these groups/studies in the US and Latin American Studies, a different animal altogether. If you want to be careful and more rigorous in a scholarly sense about your program name, then, I might suggest something like "Latin American and Latino/Chicana Studies" in order to make clear that Latin American studies, too, has different outlooks, methodologies, and goals from Latina/o Studies and Chicano/a Studies in the United States. I would however definitively say that "Hispanic" studies is never an option, at least in academic--and, let's face it, political--terms. Good luck to you! Tace Hedrick Associate Professor English/Women's Studies University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611 --30--
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|