CSUDH News

The primary source of news and information about California State University, Dominguez Hills, its students, faculty, and staff.

History

Doris Namala is Reviving History’s Lost Perspectives

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Two of Doris Namala’s greatest thrills are experiencing students’ enthusiasm about her lessons that challenge European-centered perspectives of Mexican history, and knowing her former students who now teach are relishing the same experience in local schools.

Namala, a colonial Latin American historian, is well respected in California State University, Dominguez Hills’ (CSUDH) History Department for her bold and creative approach to integrating her research into student learning. That admiration has garnered her the 2018 Catherine H. Jacobs Outstanding Faculty Lecturer Award, an honor that acknowledges non-tenure track lecturers who have “demonstrated excellence in teaching effectiveness and overall contribution to the university.”

“It was very humbling to accept the award. This university has a strong mission toward student success and learning, and lecturers are a big part of that,” said Namala, who has been teaching at CSUDH since 2009. “It really helps to have an amazing and supportive History Department. I have been very fortunate to be able to incorporate my native language-driven colonial Mexican research into my teaching here at CSUDH, and my students have responded with such excitement to it.”

We argue that indigenous women were powerful, yet exploited players in all European conquests across the continent, and seek to remember and re-integrate them back into history where they belong.  –Doris Namala

Namala received a Ph.D. in colonial Latin American history from UCLA in 2002. Her dissertation is based on the writings of an early 17th-century Nahua annalist of Mexico City, and delves into questions of indigenous identity at the center of Spanish rule in the mature colonial period.

According to Namala, Mexican and much of United States history has been taught from the Eurocentric and male-dominated perspective that originated from Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who conquered Mexico.

Namala’s Senior Seminar students are studying the history of Los Angeles, and engaging in research through the CSUDH University Archives. She is also launching a research project centered on the historical Pueblo de Los Ángeles–known today as Olvera Street–which was founded in 1781 that will be incorporated into her senior seminar. She will examine the relationship between the local Tongva (TONG-vÉ™) populations and the settlers from New Spain who lived and worked in the region until Mexico became an independent nation in the 1820s.

In her First-Year Seminar course, Namala encourages students to “replace the cardboard caricatures” that indigenous people–women in particular–are often reduced to with much more interesting and factual real-life stories. The course explores two indigenous women in particular, Malintzin and Pocahontas, during the time of the European conquests of their respective homelands, Mexico, and the Chesapeake.

“These women were agents who shaped history, but are not remembered in that way, and only a handful of such women are remembered by name today,” she said. “Now, we argue that indigenous women were powerful, yet exploited players in all European conquests across the continent, and seek to remember and re-integrate them back into history where they belong.”

The impact of Namala’s teaching is moving beyond CSUDH to former students who are now teaching and shedding light on long-disregarded perspectives about U.S., Mexican, and Los Angeles history for their K-12 students.

Alumnus Scott Aquiles (’15, B.A., History, Chicana/o Studies minor) was one of her students who now teaches 9th grade ethnic studies, 7th grade world history, and 6th-9th grade English language development at Horace Mann UCLA Community School in South Los Angeles, where he grew up.

“I had never been taught much about Latin America or Mexican history until I was in college. Dr. Namala taught me to think differently, and always encouraged me to do more research and explore my own curiosities about my culture,” said Aquiles. “Now, as an ethnic studies teacher, I’m experiencing the importance of what she taught me, particularly the women’s perspective and influence on Mexican history, which I emphasize for my students. It was also interesting to learn from Dr. Namala about how the United States impacts Latin American countries, which I also teach to my students, especially my English-language development class.”

The work of educators like Namala and Aquiles is also impacting how Latin American history is taught statewide. As minority communities and their political and social stature continues to grow in California, the demand for more ethnic studies programs in college and the teaching of more accurate history in K-12 schools is growing as well.

Last year, California’s popular 4th grade mission building project became history itself. It was replaced by lessons on Native Americans, Chinese immigrants, and the diverse cultures that settled the state. The Los Angeles Unified School District has also integrated ethnic studies into its high school curricula.

In addition to being a trailblazing lecturer, Namala enjoys developing and participating in extra-curricular activity with her students, which includes taking them on academic fieldtrips to places with abundant local history and culture on display, such as Olvera Street, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. She also co-mentors the CSUDH’s History Club and the campus chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, a national history honors society.

Namala is particularly proud of helping launch the e-journal Toro Historical Review in 2016, which she now manages and produces with her students and colleagues in the History Department.

“The journal is so inclusive and has been such a wonderful experience for me. Every faculty member in our department who has a student featured in the journal contributes to the introduction,” said Namala. “So along with becoming published writers before they graduate, our students are also learning about publication production, and are part of the review process. It’s a really exciting time for us all, and I look forward to many more years of engaged teaching and learning at this university.”

Bianca Murillo Radically Rethinks Global Capitalism

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Associate Professor of History Bianca Murillo’s first book, “Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth Century Ghana” (Ohio University Press, 2017), provides an expansive perspective of global capitalism that examines how race, gender, and power are created through commercial networks, and offers a radical rethinking of how economies and markets function.

Funded by the Fulbright Hays Program and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Murillo conducted extensive research in the U.K., Europe, and West Africa to trace the evolution of consumerism in the colonial Gold Coast and independent Ghana as far back as the late 19th Century. But while much of the research for her book was spent scouring corporate archives on two continents, its stories are best illustrated through oral histories Murillo conducted with everyday retailers and consumers, as well as former employees of the United Africa Company (UAC), the British trading giant that the book primarily focuses on. The company operated in West Africa from 1929 until it was absorbed by its parent company Unilever in 1987.

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Murillo received her Ph.D. in African history from UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2009, and earned a doctoral emphasis focused on gender and labor from UCSB’s Department of Feminist Studies. She received the 2015-2016 Graves Award in the Humanities (administered by the American Council for Learned Societies) for her “outstanding teaching ” from Willamette University, where she served as assistant professor of history before coming to CSUDH in fall 2016.

Murillo has lived and worked in Ghana off and on for close to 14 years, and has also worked in other African countries including, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Egypt, and Morocco. She shares those experiences, her scholarship, and love of history with CSUDH Campus News Center.

Q: What were some of your goals for this book?
A: I wanted to understand the intersections between colonialism and capitalism from an Africa-centered perspective. To do this, I had to revisit the histories of old colonial trading firms, like the UAC and others that tend to be a bit dull and impersonal; full of statistics, facts and names. My underlying goal for the book was to bring the market and the UAC to life through the people who experienced it. This approach was challenging and took me to every corner of Ghana just looking for people who used to work with or for the company. Social networks in Ghana are extensive, so if you have an old photo and a name, it’s possible to find someone. Plus, everyone in Ghana knows the UAC. The company basically had a monopoly on the West African import/export business, so its activities reached every corner of the country. Another goal for the book was to make it teachable. It’s 204 pages long, which is considered short for a history book, so students can read half in one week and finish it up the next. Each chapter can stand on its own as a short case study so a professor could also assign just one chapter in a business or social history, or a global studies class. There’s something for everyone.

Q: How would you say your research on this area of African history differs from other historians?
A: The book makes an important methodological intervention by fusing business and economic history with social and cultural history. To do so, I had to put two seemingly distinct types of sources in conversation–corporate archives and oral histories. I wanted to show the range of experiences that animated individual encounters with the market from all different vantage points. African history is rich and comprised of a multitude of stories, so I also wanted to push back against old, tired narratives of Africans within world economic history books as simply industrial laborers and producers of raw materials.

Bianca Murillo’s writing has been published in the journals Africa, Enterprise & Society, and Gender & History. Her current project is a comparative history of West African security guards, security work, and migration in cities like Accra, Los Angeles, and London.

Q: Can you briefly summarize your overall research findings from the book?
A: Global markets were contested spaces, but not always in the ways we might assume. Economic realities in 20th-Century Ghana were shaped by battles against colonialism and neocolonial domination, as well as on-going controversies over the meanings of wealth and proper accumulation, the role of the state and political authority, and the formation of gendered and racial ideologies. The importance of a group that I call “commercial intermediaries”– African shopkeepers, clerks, assistants, credit customers–were also instrumental in shaping the development of Ghana’s economy.

Q: How did Africa and Ghana first get on your radar?
A: Courses as an undergraduate definitely sparked my interest in Africa. Specifically, reading African writers. Novels by authors like Buchi Emecheta and Ama Aidoo were among my favorites, and I still teach them today. This interest expanded even more when I studied Islamic history abroad in North Africa. Ghana, however, will always be the place I return to. As a student, I was drawn to theories about decolonization, liberation, and global solidarity. In 1957, Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African country to gain political independence. It therefore holds a unique space within social, political, and intellectual narratives from this period. In the 1950s and 60s, it was a major international destination for anti-colonial activists, scholars, writers, and feminist thinkers. The country was, and still is, a place of radical possibilities.

Q: How do you translate your research and travel experiences into teaching for your students?
A: My classes are really interactive and participatory. I found that engaging with students in this way is crucial to moving them from an old remember, recite, and regurgitate model of studying history to a new place where they are active critical thinkers. In the process, I really urge students to understand history, not as a set of events to be memorized, but as a generative tool–one that allows us to ask new questions about our sources, our interests, and the world. This approach is also key to teaching students how to interrogate and challenge older, more familiar ways of knowing–the hallmark of any type of critical studies.

As a historian of Africa, specifically, I am invested in using the classroom to challenge students’ assumptions about the continent as some place distant and different. You will often hear me saying that “students of African history are also historians of the world.” I assign materials that focus on the African past as one of dynamic interconnectivity, while centering continental and diasporan African experiences and knowledge. Lastly, the study of Africa demands a rigorous engagement with issues of power, privilege, and inequity. All of my courses therefore require students to immerse themselves in scholarly material, but also actively make connections to contemporary political and social issues, as well as their own research and advocacy projects.

Q: What do you love the most about history and teaching it?
A: Its transformative potential. Throughout my years teaching, I’ve seen the study of history spark major changes in students, and this goes beyond academics and intellectual development. Most inspiring for me is to see students apply historical thinking in creative and unexpected ways. I have former students who are professional artists, writers, and dancers, and others who work on Capitol Hill, travel abroad as nurses, and run community food co-ops.

 

Donna Nicol: An Agent of Change for Africana Studies

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Donna Nicol, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies at CSU Dominguez Hills.
Donna Nicol, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies at CSU Dominguez Hills.

Donna Nicol, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies, arrived at CSUDH in fall 2017. As a faculty member, she teaches Comparative Ethnic and Global Societies. As chair, Nicol is working with her colleagues and the university administration to strengthen the program’s curriculum and bolster its presence on campus and in the region.

A fourth-generation “Comptonite,” Nicol’s deep local roots and unique upbringing in a community-focused family has had a profound effect on her as a researcher and educator. She briefly left South Los Angeles for Ohio State University where she earned a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Foundations of Education with a specialization in African American higher educational history, and a minor in African American Studies in 2007.

Prior to coming to CSUDH, Nicol was the first woman of color to be promoted and tenured in Women’s Studies at CSU Fullerton. She joined the faculty ranks at Fullerton after spending nearly a decade working in higher education administration, a nontraditional career path that she believes gives her a unique perspective on the ethos of public education, and an advantage as an academic chair.

Much of Nicol’s past research has focused on the role that political forces outside a university have on African American college students, primarily conservative philanthropic foundations. She has presented her work at national events, and has published a variety of articles in such publications as Race, Ethnicity and Education and Feminist Teacher. 

Nicol is now exploring the dynamics of women of color teaching and working in academic administrative positions in higher education, and the unique ways they wrestle with “cultural-identity taxation,” which she says affects their success on campus as well as their personal lives.

Nicol sat down with CSUDH Campus News Center to discuss her unique Compton upbringing, her latest research, and her perspectives regarding the African American experience in higher education.

Q: To get started, can you tell me about your upbringing in Compton, and a little about how it influences you as an educator?
A: My family moved the Compton because it was one of the few places in Los Angeles at the time that allowed African Americans to buy homes. Coming from a military background–my great-grandfather was as an Army doctor during World War I–my great-grandparents didn’t want to go back to the South with mixed-race kids (Filipino and Black). After World War II, they moved to California as did my paternal grandparents who also moved to Compton to avoid racial segregation in the Jim Crow South. We were one of the few families that had the opportunity to go to college. My great-grandfather was a doctor, so he had “cultural capital,” and taught my grandmother how to prepare for college; who passed it on to my mother; who passed it on to me.

My grandmother was half Filipino, but wanted others to also identify her as a black woman. She was a co-founder of the Office for Black Community Development. They created the first food co-op in Watts after the Watts Rebellion. She also worked for the Compton Bulletin newspaper, and we were very connected to Compton politics and the neighborhood. So I was culturally raised black and Filipino, but very much steeped in black culture and history. My teaching, in part, is influenced by the local activism that I did as a child with my grandmother. I talk about identity in terms of race, informed by discussions on class and gender and how these identities shape how we interact with the world and region that we live in.

Q: Can you share why you left administration work to go back to teaching over a decade ago?
A: Being a faculty member is the first job to give me the warm fuzzies. I wanted to interact more with students again, and to experience more intellectual stimulation through research. It’s been great because I love teaching, especially here at Dominguez Hills. This university does an excellent job of giving students of color the support they need. One of the reasons I was brought in as chair at this university is I know the CSU system, and I know the language of the administration. What also attracted me to the position was the opportunity to broaden my work regarding race, which has allowed me to expand upon my previous work on the history of African Americans in higher education, and to continue my work regarding African American women as faculty and academic leaders.

Donna Nicol is working on her first book “Black Woman on Board: Trustee Claudia Hampton and the Rise and Fall of Affirmative Action in the California State University System, 1974-1994,” which will be the first monograph that chronicles the work and impact of Dr. Claudia Hampton, the first African American trustee in the CSU and the first woman to ever chair a major university board in the United States.

Q: What are some of your plans for the Africana Studies program?
A: The program hasn’t had a full-time chair in a long time, so there is a lot to do in terms of curriculum updates and setting policies. But I like a challenge, and look forward to helping rebuild the program and increasing its visibility on campus and in the wider community.

We want to offer students more variety, and work to establish Africana Studies at Cal State Dominguez Hills as a hub for ethnic and Africana studies in the South Bay. The faculty already have some innovative ideas for the curriculum. We have been talking a great deal about developing courses around gender, namely Africana womanhood and Black masculinity, contemporary social movements such as Black Lives Matter, and creating more opportunities for students to study abroad in different parts of Africa. We already have strong African and African American history and literature curricula, and are considering different types of media coursework, such as teaching about film and social media. Our challenge is we are very small, but that is common in ethnic studies.

Q: I understand you have an article coming out regarding your research on “cultural-identify taxation.” Could you explain what that means?
A: Amado Padilla coined the term “cultural taxation” in 1994. Cultural taxation happens a lot in educational settings. Faculty of color often end up doing a lot of extra work that doesn’t get rewarded. For example, a student may come and say “I had an instructor who told me I was stupid because I’m black.” The professor ends up counseling and mentoring the student, even helping with the steps to file a grievance, which can take a good amount of time. This and other types of extra work is cultural taxation. It’s often a common expectation that faculty of color do all of the race-related work.

Identity taxation is more specific to women. Female faculty often take on the role of mother figure–mothering students through a crisis. One might say, “I’m pregnant, and my family is against abortion. What do I do?” They often come to you because they’ve built a level of trust with you. In return, you wouldn’t want to refer that student to someone else; to just hand her off. So for women faculty of color they are doubly taxed to do this extra “diversity” work and be mother figures to students without little to any recognition of the time, energy, and stress this has on our personal and professional lives.

Nicol has co-authored the article “Reclaiming Our Time: Women of Color Faculty and Radical Self-Care in the Academy” with Dr. Jennifer Yee, which will be published this spring in the Feminist Teacher. The article explores how cultural-identity taxation takes a toll on one’s body, mind, and spirit, and offers suggestions for combating this taxation through radical self-care practices.

Q: CSU Dominguez Hills serves the largest population of African American students in the CSU system. However, black enrollment is down here and across the system–particularly among males. Why do you think that is? Is there another way of examining this issue?
A: Many high school students are resisting college because our K-12 system is not preparing them well. In many cases, African American students do not even have the basic requirements met to enter into the CSU. One of the biggest problems is that students are only being encouraged to graduate high school and not look beyond. We also have a glut of people with college degrees, but often no jobs for them. Many now believe we need to bring the manufacturing sector back. The question is, why weren’t we doing that in the first place? So I’m on board with finding better ways to prepare them for college, but would also suggest that African American students who are not sure about going to college consider starting at a community college where skilled trade curricula is also available to let them decide what is best for them.

Q: Whether graduating from college, or going straight to work after high school, what one piece of advice would you give young African Americans to help them prepare for today’s workforce?
A: Students really need to practice the skill of networking while they’re at the university. In the workforce, most people know how to do their jobs technically, but they often have terrible interpersonal skills, and that is really going to hold them back. Students, particularly those of color, need to be taught how to network and communicate better. It should be a part of every curriculum, including the STEM fields.