Perez, Valeria

     Hello everyone! My name is Valeria Perez and my pronouns are she/her/hers. I am a fourth year double majoring in Sociology and Chicano/a/x and Central American Studies. I'm looking forward to getting my Masters in Social Work and pursuing a career as a Child and Family Social Worker. 

    I was initially going to just major in Sociology but just realized this summer that aside from Sociology courses the classes I enjoyed the most were from Chicano/a studies and that I had done most of the course work for the Chicanx studies minor so I decided to minor in it and I was going to graduate a quarter early which would be winter instead of spring. However, I was only a few courses away from the major so I decided to stay the rest of the year and double major. One of my all time favorite classes that I have taken here at UCLA was Chicano/a music class, Chicano/a M116 centered around Chicanx artists and their music in the United States. For this reason I'm really excited to take this course centered around. a different type of art and the artists behind Chicanx Latinx Art. I have little to no knowledge on any Chicanx artists in the world of photography and paintings so I'm really excited to learn about some of these artists especially female artists whom I feel have had a lack of representation in the world of art and to learn about what their work communicates.

    In regards to the readings, Venegas article states that, " The implication of this for the Chicana, as both a woman and a member of a racially discriminated against, economically and politically disenfranchised group, is that she faces more obstacles in terms of recognition, equal opportunities and support, than her white sister or her Chicano counterpart in the arts.". This leaves me very intrigued to learn about what type of obstacles the artists that will be covered in this course had to go through and how they overcame them.