About
I am Professor of English and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, and I study Chicanx literature from the 19th century to the present with an emphasis on 19th century Mexican California. I’ve written two books:
Chicano Nations (NYU 2011) is about nationalism and Chicanx literature from the early-1800s to post-9/11;
Racial Immanence (NYU 2019) explores uses of the body and affect in Chicanx cultural production. My articles have appeared in leading journals such as
American Literary History, Arizona Quarterly, and
Áztlan (and several that don’t begin with the letter “A”). I am past Vice President of the Latina/o Studies Association
and past chair of the Modern Language Association’s prize committee for the best book in Chicana/o and Latina/o Literary and Cultural Studies. I’m also past chair of both the MLA’s Executive Committee on Chicana/o Literature and its Committee on the Literature of People of Color of the US and Canada, and a past Director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center as well as past chair of UCLA’s Committee on Diversity and Equal Opportunity.
In the English Department at UCLA I was the inaugural Director of Professionalization, in which capacity I worked jointly with the Director of Academic Placement to develop professionalization programs for graduate students at every stage of the PhD program.
Upcoming Talks and Conferences
July 2018, “10 Years of Manifest Destinies,” Latina/o Studies Association, Washington DC
August 2018, “Historicizing the X in Latinx,” U of Colorado, Boulder
October 2018, “Refusal in The Factory of Dreams,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP), New Orleans LA
November 2018, “The Ineffable Invisibility of Latinx Modernism,” Modernist Studies Association, Columbus OH
January 2019, “Graduate Career Development: A Workshop for Faculty,” Modern Language Association, Chicago IL
