ShelfLife@Texas

Educational psychologist Richard Valencia’s most recent book, “Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking” (Routledge, 2010), was selected by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for the 2011 Outstanding Book Award.

“Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking” critiques “deficit thinking,” an approach to student academic failure fraught with racial and class bias that places blame upon the student and his or her background. The deficit thinking approach has existed for almost a century and has been applied to American minority students.

Described as a “superlative treatment” of deficit…

Despite the hyper-visibility of Latinos and Latin American immigrants in recent political debates and popular culture, the daily lives of America’s new “majority minority” remain largely invisible and mischaracterized. Editors Frank Guridy (University of Texas at Austin), Gina Pérez (Oberlin College) and Adrian Burgos, Jr. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) assemble a collection of essays in “Beyond El Barrio” (NYU Press, Oct. 2010) — that together, provide analyses that not only defy stubborn stereotypes, but also present novel narratives of Latina/o…

Maggie Rivas-Rodríguez, associate professor of journalism, and Emilio Zamora, professor of history, will discuss their new anthology “Beyond the Latino World War II Hero: The Social and Political Legacy of a Generation” (University of Texas Press, 2009), at an event hosted by the Center for Mexican American Studies at 4 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 16, at El Mercado Uptown, 1702 Lavaca St.

The collection of oral histories, scribed by an array of scholars from various disciplines, adds illuminating insights into Mexican American patriotism…