Latin@ Studies at OSU
Course puts students on road to cultural discoveries
By Ivonne García

“Speak from your belly, speak loud, speak strong!” Professor Luz Calvo instructs her students after they’ve formed two lines to face each other in a Derby Hall hallway. Each student in the line must read a sentence from a short story to another student, who must walk between the lines and perform the emotion of the sentence read to him or her. “Project, yell it at him,” Calvo tells a student, sounding more like a director talking to an actor in a play than a professor in a traditional literature class.

But Latino Studies 242 - Introduction to Latino Studies is not like any other class. Students not only read, analyze and do research on short stories written by Latino writers such as Sandra Cisneros and Ramón García, but they also create an audiovisual installation of the piece. The CS 242 installation projects will be open for public viewing on Thursday, Dec. 2 (9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.) at the Grey Suites in the Ohio Union. “This class shows that we can create alternative spaces within the university where Latino identities can find a sense of home and develop,” states Calvo, who is co-teaching the class with Professor Angeles Romero.

This is the third time that Calvo has taught the class and it’s the first time that most of the students enrolled are Latin@. The first year Calvo taught the class there were three Latinos, and the second year there were six. “This year, there are 16,” she says, adding that this is so despite the fact that enrollment in the class is down from the usual 35 students. Asked by Calvo and Romero to identify themselves on a sheet of paper, the students reveal a remarkable variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, including “Black/Native American,” “Mexican/Puerto Rican,” “Mexican/Black,” “Irish/German/Native American,” “Boricua/Puerto Rican/Latino Bonito,” “Chicana,” and “American.”

When the students return to the classroom, after their hallway exercise is over, they break into five groups and turn to a large sheet of paper taped to the wall that bears the title of the short story their installation will represent. Calvo asks them to come up with a list of abstract ideas and their corresponding metaphors for each short story. “Love would be the abstract idea, and a rose would be the metaphor,” she explains. The students in a group working on Ramón García’s “Amor Indio” are eager to share their experiences in the class, and their enthusiasm for their project and for the Latino Studies program at OSU.

“I’m a Latina,” says Nancy Crespo, who’s majoring in Political Science and Spanish. “I like how [the professors] express the culture. They make up all these ideas to express Latino culture, and they’re so excited.” Nadia Anguiano, who’s in Mechanical Engineering, agrees that it’s important for Latinos to be in a class that celebrates their culture. “As a Mexican, I feel that my culture is hidden. I feel so proud [in this class] that I want to learn more. The class gives you pride in who you are.” In another group preparing an installation for Achy Obejas’ “We Came All the Way,” Monica Liggins, who’s majoring in Political Science, praises the fact that translating the short story into other media means you “really have to put yourself into the story, you have to analyze it from so many aspects.”

Daniel Lara, who majors in Accounting, said the class helps the many different kinds of people in a large university such as OSU become more aware of the different cultures that surround them, and Liggins echoed the sentiment, adding that first-year students at the university should be encouraged to take such classes. “I wish I had taken more courses in this area,” she says.