I’m an educator with more than 25 years of experience designing and teaching college-level classes in history, oral history, and ethnic studies.

I view teaching as a collaborative process where teacher and student work together to create and sustain an environment where learning takes place. I do this by recognizing and respecting the knowledge each of us brings to the learning process and uses this basis of respect to foster an ethic of humanism. I am trained in and work from an outcomes-based model of education.

As a Chicanx/Latinx Studies scholar, I am deeply committed to disseminating the academic knowledge to non-academic publics. Creating meaningful translations of my research about Latinos for Latinos motivates the public presentations, workshops, and public-facing work that has marked my career in academia.

I currently teach an assortment of courses on a regular and rotating basis. The most recent and consistent are described below.

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Intro to Chicane-Latine Histories is an introduction to the dynamic scholarly fields of Chicane and Latine Studies as well as the college-level process of historical inquiry. Together we examine the historical experiences of Latin American-descent people in the U.S. across several centuries analyzing historical processes like colonialism; racial formation; migration and settlement; community and identity formation; and the struggle for rights and democracy. (taught each fall)

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All Power to the People! Social Movements for Justice (Hist 25 CH)

All Power to the People! is a survey of post-WWII racial movements in the United States. We examine issues of power, race, gender, and class in U.S. society as we investigate debates surrounding the prospects of equity, equality, and social justice. At heart, our class seeks to learn from the diverse ways groups of “nonwhite” people have envisioned “freedom” in the U.S. context and how these aspirational visions have served to mobilize struggles for a more just world. (taught each spring)

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American Inequality (Hist 127 CH)

American Inequality is an advanced reading seminar exploring the modern United States through the histories of coercion, containment, detention, and imprisonment. Our class explores analyses of the shifting terrain of carceral power in this nation (and, by extension, our globe) to inform projects of resistance and recreation of power relations for our collective futures. Our class is part of the interdisciplinary field of critical ethnic studies, which gives rise to these modes of analysis while centering African American, Native American, Asian American, and Latine experiences vis- à-vis the carceral state. (taught alternate falls)

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Latinx Oral Histories CP (Hist 101S CH)

Latinx Oral Histories introduces students to historical research in Chicane-Latine communities through the theory, ethics, and practice of oral history. Together we read and discuss foundational texts in the field as we learn how to conduct, preserve, and make use of oral historical research. In collaboration with each other and community partners, students will record and archive oral histories based in surrounding Latinx communities and build a public archive for future generations to access knowledge of the past. The class culminates in a research project making use of the generated sources. (taught alternate springs)