About this item
In The Heart of the Mission, Cary Cordova combines urban, political, and art history to examine how the Mission District, a longtime bohemian enclave in San Francisco, has served as an important place for an influential and largely ignored Latino arts movement from the 1960s to the present. Well before the anointment of the "Mission School" by art-world arbiters at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Latino artists, writers, poets, playwrights, performers, and filmmakers made the Mission their home and their muse.The Mission, home to Chileans, Cubans, Guatemalans, Mexican Americans, Nicaraguans, Puerto Ricans, and Salvadorans never represented a single Latino identity. In tracing the experiences of a diverse group of Latino artists from the 1940s to the turn of the century, Cordova connects wide-ranging aesthetics to a variety of social movements and activist interventions.
About the Author
Cary Cordova is an Associate Professor in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco. Growing up in San Francisco schooled her in the everyday art and politics of the city. Later witnessing rapid gentrification and dramatic social change, she wrote The Heart of the Mission to document the rich history of a Latino arts renaissance in the city. Drawing on expansive oral histories and archival research, this book traces the experiences of Latino and Latina artists in San Francisco from the 1940s through the 1990s.Cordova's research focuses predominantly on Latino cultural production, including art, music, and the performing arts. Her writing has appeared in academic journals, including Latino Studies and Visual Resources, and in books, such as Beyond el Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America and Imperfections by Chance: Paul Feeley Retrospective, 1954-1966. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, Cordova taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and the University of California, Davis. She also has served as an archivist, curator, public historian, and oral historian for various public institutions, including the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.
