Faculty

Summary of Expertise

Migration and citizenship studies; assimilation and immigrant integration; United States cultural, ethnic, and immigration history; twentieth-century Mexican-American history; comparative ethnic studies; feminist and gender studies; Latinx literary, cultural, and visual studies; speculative fiction and alternative futurisms

Research Interests

My research interests include race, migration, citizenship, and immigrant integration. My current book project, Assimilation: An Alternative History (under contract with the University of California Press), excavates the history of the concept of assimilation in the United States and explores what's at stake in debates regarding assimilation and assimilability.

I'm co-editing with Sylvanna Falcón, Steve McKay, Juan Poblete, and Felicity Amaya Schaeffer Spectra of Belonging: Mobility, Precarity, Non-citizenship, a volume to emerge from our 2016-17 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Culture.

I'm the author of The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Duke University Press, 2009) and several essays on race, gender, and science fiction.

I'll spend 2019-20 developing a project on immigrant integration as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  
     

Biography, Education and Training

I'm Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My research interests include race, migration, citizenship, and immigrant integration. I'm the author of Assimilation: An Alternative History (under contract with the University of California Press), The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Duke University Press, 2009), and several essays on race, gender, and science fiction. From 2013 to 2018, I directed UC Santa Cruz’s Chicano Latino Research Center, now the Research Center for the Americas. 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. A first-generation college student and a participant in the University of California’s First-Generation Initiative, I hold a Ph.D. in ethnic studies and a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley. I'm a recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award, UC Santa Cruz’s highest teaching honor, and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. I'll spend 2019-20 developing a project on immigrant integration as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  

• 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, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University (2019-20)
• 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

Migration and citizenship studies; Latinx literary, cultural, and visual studies; United States cultural, ethnic, and immigration history; Mexican-American history; comparative ethnic studies; feminist and gender studies; speculative fiction and alternative futurisms