Playing the Pivot: Teaching Latina/o History in Good Times and Bad.

The author talks of his experiences teaching a one semester class in Latina/o American history survey class for undergraduates at the Oberlin College. He starts by admitting his failure in his first attempt to teach such a class in 2000. Not only was it his first class that he planned and taught on his own, but he had no textbook to help organize his lectures. He now teaches his class by dividing the different Latina/o groups and teaching each group's history as a separate "unit." He feels his class challenges previous conceptions about "traditional" American history that were basically a white biased dialogue with a few Indians at the beginning and some prominent Blacks featured towards the end. He includes discussions of sexual politics since he feels this is a major theme of Latina/o studies.