ON CAMPUS AT UCI:History chair’s book chronicles U.S. Latinas

Vicki Ruiz collects and shares stories of Latinas in America.

Growing up, Ruiz loved hearing her mother’s and grandmother’s stories of their childhoods ? the kind of stories she never found in history books. Today, Ruiz ? newly appointed chair of the UCI history department ? is writing her own history books about Latinas who have long been overlooked by researchers. Her latest and most ambitious project is a three-volume work she co-edited called “Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia.”

“This is not a dry encyclopedia or a who’s who,” Ruiz says. “We wanted to show what these women’s lives were like in their historical moment.”

The encyclopedia includes stories of more than 500 Latinas from the 1500s to the present. Ruiz and her co-author spent eight years editing their nearly 1,000-page encyclopedia, which features entries by more than 230 writers, including UCI faculty and grad students. Ruiz contributed 26 of the stories.

“I wanted these women to reveal themselves in their own words and on their own terms, whether through a letter, a court case, a diary or an interview,” she says.

The entries read like short stories. They tell of Latinas making history, whether carving out a community in St. Augustine in 1565, reflecting on colonialism and liberty during the 1890s or fighting for civil rights through the courts of the 1940s. Among the local Latinas profiled are Los Tomboys, the “league of their own” 1947 softball champs from Orange, and Maria Elena Avila, present-day owner of Avila’s El Ranchito restaurant in Costa Mesa. Avila and her brothers own nine other restaurants in the Southern California chain, which was started by their parents in 1966.

“People who heard about the project would e-mail or call us and say, ‘You have to talk to my grandmother,’” Ruiz said.

In her own life, Ruiz is making history as well: She’s the first Latina to serve as president of the Organization of American Historians and recently was elected the first Latina president of the American Studies Assn. In April, she was the first Latina elected a Fellow of the Society of American Historians, which promotes excellence in historical writing.

Ruiz is gratified others are beginning to appreciate Latinos’ stories.

“When I started 25 years ago, there were only a handful of scholars in Latino history. Now there are about 35,” she says. “It’s terrific to see how the field has blossomed.”

Beckman lecture dinner on the plate

The Orange County Chapter of the ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) Foundation will present the Third Annual Arnold O. Beckman Lecture Dinner at 6 p.m. Tues., Sept. 12, in the Beckman Center on the UCI campus.

This year’s guest speaker will be noted geophysicist Andrea Donnellan, deputy manager of the science division at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Donnellan will speak on her work using GPS satellite technology to study earthquakes and the corresponding movements of the Earth’s crust.

ARCS is a nonprofit, national organization of women whose 14 chapters provide scholarships to outstanding U.S. graduate and undergraduate students in the biological sciences, physical sciences, information and computer science, medicine and engineering. Founded in 1999, the Orange County chapter awarded 16 $10,000 scholarships for the 2005-06 academic year.

Tickets for the lecture and dinner are $200 per person; proceeds will go to ARCS scholarships. Event chairs are Mary Lou Shattuck and Pat Beckman. For more information, call 714-960-9276 or visit www.ARCSfoundation.org /Orangecounty.

New World Flamenco Festival

More than 35 artists from Spain will perform in “Fronteras,” the 2006 New World Flamenco Festival, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Aug. 4-13.

Produced by Barclay president Douglas Rankin, the fifth annual festival will showcase three flamenco companies: Compa”ia Juana Amaya at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Aug. 4-5, and 6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 6; Sin Fronteras, starring Emmy Award-winning flamenco artist Yaelisa, Savion Glover and Son de Jerez, at 8 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 8-9; and Compa”ia Rafaela Carrasco at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Aug. 11-12, and 6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 13.

The festival includes Café Flamenco ? refreshments with entertainment by guitarist José Tanaka and other guest artists ? before and after each performance.

Tickets are $38 and $43. For more information, call (949) 854-4646 or visit www.thebarclay.org.

Students post travelogues

During summer, many UCI students embark on adventures outside the classroom, seeking lessons in the field, the lab or the working world. On the Today@UCI Web site, students are reporting on their travels as they make personal and intellectual discoveries.

Vicky Zhou, a senior with an unusual double major ? dance and biochemistry and molecular biology ? is one of eight students posting travelogues; she’s conducting bioinformatics research (enhancing a database involving the lowly ringworm) at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Junior Zachary Gale, a literary journalism major, is on Shakespeare’s turf, studying literature and filmmaking at Cambridge University through the UCI Summer Session Travel Program.

For more information, call https://today. uci.edu/Features/travelogues.

Hypertension talk

UCI Medical Center will offer a free talk on hypertension by Dr. Andrew Reikes, endocrinologist, at 11 a.m. Wed., Aug. 9, in the Tustin Senior Center, 200 South C Street.

Reikes will discuss high blood pressure and a program to control it. For more information, call (877) 824-3627.

Summer film series screens in August

UCI Summer Session and the Department of Film & Media Studies will present a Summer Delirium Film Series on four Thursdays in August.

Films include Federico Fellini’s classic “La Dolce Vita” (Italy, 1960) Aug. 10; “Repo Man,” directed by Alex Cox (USA, 1984) Aug. 17; Jacques Tati’s “Playtime” (France, 1967) Aug. 24; and Bruce Brown’s “The Endless Summer,” (USA 1966) Aug. 31.

Screenings begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Humanities Instructional Building, Room 100. Admission is free. Visitor parking is available in lot 7 for $7. For more information, call (949) 824-5493.

Observatory visitor night Aug. 18

Visitor Night at the UCI Observatory, featuring a talk on “The History of the Solar System,” takes place 8-10 p.m. Friday, Aug. 18. The public is invited to view the Perseid meteor shower, Saturn, Jupiter, nebulae and star clusters through the observatory’s 24-inch telescope and numerous smaller telescopes set up in the courtyard. Amateur astronomers can bring their own telescopes.

The event is free, and parking is available for $7 at the new parking structure at East Peltason and Anteater drives. For more information, call www.physics.uci.edu/{tilde}observat.