Faculty

Summary of Expertise

Critical migration studies; United States cultural, ethnic, and immigration history; theories of citizenship; twentieth-century Mexican American history; comparative ethnic studies; feminist and gender studies; Latino literature; speculative fiction and alternative futurisms

Research Interests

I'm a scholar of race, gender, migration, mobility, and citizenship. My current book project, Assimilation: An Alternative History, is under contract with the University of California Press. 

I'm also a scholar of Mexican American history and Latinx culture. My book, The Woman in the Zoot Suit (Duke University Press, 2009), excavates the participation of Mexican American women in the zoot subculture of the 1940s and examines the significance of the zoot-suiter in Chicanx letters, culture, and activism since the 1960s. I've also published several essays on race, gender, and speculative fiction.  

Over 2016-17, I was the principal investigator of Non-citizenship, UC Santa Cruz's first Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Culture. I'm now co-editing with Sylvanna Falcón, Steve McKay, Juan Poblete, and Felicity Amaya Schaeffer Spectra of Belonging: Mobility, Precarity, Non/Citizenship, a volume examining how the movement of people and their incorporation, marginalization, and exclusion in society challenge older notions of citizenship and alienage.

From 2013 until 2018, I was director of UC Santa Cruz's Research Center for the Americas (formerly the Chicano Latino Research Center).

I'm a recipient of UC Santa Cruz's Excellence in Teaching Award (2010) and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2001-02). Over 2018-19, I'm participating in UC Santa Cruz's inaugural Executive Vice Chancellor Fellows Academy.   

Biography, Education and Training

• Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley
• Designated Emphasis, Gender and Women's Studies, University of California, Berkeley
• B.A., English, University of California, Berkeley

Honors, Awards and Grants

• Fellow, Executive Vice Chancellor Fellows Academy, UC Santa Cruz (2018-19)
• Board Opportunity Fund Grant, UC Santa Cruz Foundation (2017-19)
• Principal Investigator, Non-citizenship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Culture (2016-17)
• Board Opportunity Fund Grant, UC Santa Cruz Foundation (2015-16)
• Co-principal Investigator, Working for Dignity, Engaging Humanities Public Humanities Project Grant, University of California Humanities Research Institute (2014-15)
• Co-principal Investigator, Latino Cultures Network, University of California Humanities Network Multicampus Research Group (2011-12)
• University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) Grant (2011-12, 2015-16)
• UC Santa Cruz Excellence in Teaching Award (2010)
• Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2001-02)

Selected Publications

• The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Duke University Press, 2009)
  
  For more publications, please visit my website.  

Selected Recordings

Click here for links to audio interviews. 

Teaching Interests

Critical migration studies; United States cultural, ethnic, and immigration history; theories of citizenship; twentieth-century Mexican American history; comparative ethnic studies; feminist and gender studies; Latino literature; speculative fiction