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Research examining the Chicano Movement ranges from analysis of post-Mexican Revolution muralism to the Mexican-American war to current struggles for the Chicano-identified community. At the height of the Chicano Movement, a group of over one hundred faculty, staff, and students created a plan to implement Chicano Studies into institutions of higher education, El Plan de Santa Barbara. El Plan sought to guide the reframing of structures and practices in colleges and universities to focus on the strengths and needs of Chicano communities. However, it did not specify how to teach the listed content. Over the last fifty years since Chicano Studies entered higher education research has yet to focus on pedagogy explicitly. This dissertation identifies the pedagogies of the Movement, evidenced in the teachings of Malaquias Montoya. Montoya is a visual artist, activist, and educator whose silkscreen posters and canvas paintings contributed to the Chicano Movement and have been written about and exhibited worldwide. This is the first study to analyze Montoya's work through an educational lens to document his pedagogy as a contribution to the Chicano Movement. To shed light on what Montoya carried from his experience in the Movement into his pedagogy, I applied the tools of critical race theory in education (CRT) and engaged in history and case study methods. CRT builds on the strengths of multiple critical scholarly frameworks. It informs and shapes what I am doing methodologically and why and how I am doing this research. I conducted eight semi-structured, conversational interviews (pláticas) over eighteen months. This approach enabled me to document Montoya's trajectory from artist to activist to scholar, which led to exploring how he operationalized the Movement in his community mural course, the first course of its kind taught at the University of California. I collected his syllabi and other archival materials and conducted a close textual analysis to chronicle continuities in the mural course across his two decades at UC Davis. Pláticas is a Spanish word for informal conversations, and I used this method/methodology to engage in organic talks between the researcher and participant about his lived experiences. I analyzed the plática interviews using a grounded theory approach to surface patterns and themes. I used the interviews and archival materials, and secondary analysis of multiple areas of scholarly literature to construct a chronology of Montoya's experiences, which he described as influencing his pedagogical approach. I specifically analyzed Montoya's syllabi using the analytical framework of composite counterstorytelling. My findings show that through his work as an artist, university professor, and community activist, Malaquias Montoya enacts pedagogies of the Movement with at least three identifiable continuities: ethics, empathy, and self-reflexive engagement. Functioning in tandem, the pedagogies of the Movement in practice show Montoya's community mural curriculum encompassed an ethic of self-care that informed an ethical engagement with our communities and critical empathy. Chicano Studies through El Plan was not just what we teach but how, and this study urges us to continue studying the Movement's pedagogies. |
