- Mexican American Studies
One Washington Square
San Jose State University
San Jose, CA 95192-0118 - 408-924-5583
Magdalena L Barrera
San Jose State University, Mexican American Studies, Faculty Member
- Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Chicana/o History, Chicana/o Cultural Studies, Interdisciplinarity and the study of literature, Chicana/o Literature, American Studies, and 20 moreMexican American Studies, Gender Studies, Gender, Popular Culture, Race and Ethnicity, Popular Music, Chicano Studies, Chicano/a Literature, Texas History, Chicano History, Education, Culture, Humanities, English, Latin American Studies, Critical Race Theory, Race and Racism, Teaching race and ethnicity, Higher Education, and Chicana/o Studiesedit
- Magdalena L. Barrera is Professor and Chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Jose State University (SJSU). Magdalena received her B.A. in English Literature and Latin Ameri... moreMagdalena L. Barrera is Professor and Chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Jose State University (SJSU). Magdalena received her B.A. in English Literature and Latin American Studies from the University of Chicago (1997), and her Ph.D. in Modern Thought in Literature from Stanford University (2006). In addition to teaching Chicanx literature and film at SJSU, she also leads workshops for students on academic resilience and for junior faculty on navigating the tenure process. From 2016-18, she held a faculty appointment in SJSU’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and served from 2018-2019 as the inaugural Director of the Ethnic Studies Collaborative for the SJSU’s College of Social Sciences. Magdalena’s research agenda is situated at the intersection of literary/visual studies and cultural history, specifically representations of Mexican Americans in early twentieth century American literature, music, photography, and government publications. Inspired by the Latinx students of SJSU, she also has a second research area centered on the teaching and mentoring of students of color in higher education. Her work has appeared in California History, Journal of Latinos and Education, Aztlan, Bilingual Review, Teaching with Tension, Latina/o Literature in the Classroom, Sexualities in History, Inside Higher Ed, Ms. Magazine, and Diverse Issues in Higher Education.edit
An approach to teaching Ana Castillo's novel So Far from God in a Chicana/o literature course to Latina/o students at a large public university.
Research Interests:
Recent studies show many college instructors still believe that Latino students lack the “school smarts” for academic success. This essay challenges the notion of “school smarts” in order to highlight Latino students’ numerous strengths.... more
Recent studies show many college instructors still believe that Latino students lack the “school smarts” for academic success. This essay challenges the notion of “school smarts” in order to highlight Latino students’ numerous strengths. I share my model for a mentorship program that facilitates better student-faculty communication and deepens a student-centered learning environment in a large general education course. Establishing the program led me to reflect on how the enduring belief in “school smarts” affected my own academic training. Directly challenging deficit thinking, I argue that Latino students contribute to a transformative educational process in which faculty are also learners.
Research Interests:
Mexican women’s working and romantic lives were frequent subject matter in early twentieth-century Mexican American music. Surprisingly, this trend is rendered nearly invisible by the corpus of scholarly work that focuses on the... more
Mexican women’s working and romantic lives were frequent subject matter in early twentieth-century Mexican American music. Surprisingly, this trend is rendered nearly invisible by the corpus of scholarly work that focuses on the male-centered “heroic corrido,” particularly the class and race conflicts represented in that “masculine” genre. This interdisciplinary analysis reveals that the music of what can be called “domestic drama”—popular Mexican American folksongs that comment on women, work, and marriage—offers rich evidence of how Mexican communities debated immigrant women’s increased personal freedoms in the United States. Beneath the songwriters’ often humorous language and playful melodies lies tremendous anxiety about women’s sexuality and growing visibility in the larger Mexican American community. This essay explores the challenges of using the music of domestic drama to understand immigrant women’s experiences from the 1920s to the 1950s. It demonstrates that lyrics centering on romance and cultural assimilation can be read politically as metaphors for Mexican communities’ economic concerns.
