Frances R. Aparicio is Professor Emerita at Northwestern University, where she taught in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and directed the Latina and Latino Studies Program. In Fall 2019 she held the AMUW Women’s Chair in Humanistic Studies at Marquette University. Author of Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latino Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures (1998), she has written extensively on music and gender, language and identity, popular culture, and Latinx literature. Her recent book, Negotiating Latinidad: Intralatina/o Lives in Chicago (2019), examines the processes of national negotiations that Latina/os of multiple ethnicities engage in their family and everyday lives. She is currently writing about Marc Anthony, the Salsa singer, and learning saxophone.
María DeGuzmán is a scholar, creative writer, conceptual photographer, and music composer. She has published three scholarly books: Spain’s Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo-American Empire (Minnesota Press, 2005); Buenas Noches, American Culture: Latina/o Aesthetics of Night (Indiana University Press, 2012); and Understanding John Rechy (University of South Carolina Press, 2019). She has also published creative nonfiction in Callaloo; photo-text creative nonfiction in Oyster River Pages; photography in The Grief Diaries, Coffin Bell, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Map Literary, and Two Hawks Quarterly (forthcoming); poetry in The Kentucky Poetry Review, The Cape Rock, and Empty Mirror; and short stories in Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, and Sinister Wisdom. Her SoundCloud website may be found at: https://soundcloud.com/mariadeguzman
Patricia E. Enciso is a Professor of literacy, literature, and equity studies in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio USA. Her research focuses on middle-school youth and the ways they mobilize cultural repertoires, imagination, and the arts in the production and interpretation of their own and others’ storyworlds. Dr. Enciso has served as an executive and board member of the Literacy Research Association since 2011, as the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacies research director (2011–2015) and chair and board member of the NCTE Research Foundation (2002–2005). She is coauthor of Reframing Sociocultural Theory in Literacy Research: Identity, Agency, and Power (2007), coeditor of The Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature (2010), and coeditor of the (forthcoming) Handbook of Research on Reading: Volume V. Her most recent research is published in English Teaching: Practice and Critique (2016) and the Journal of Literacy Research (2017).
Trinidad Gonzales is a Mexican American Studies and history instructor at South Texas College. His teaching and research on Mexican American and borderlands history intersect with public advocacy. Gonzales taught the first dual enrollment Mexican American history course in Texas. He is a founding member of the Rio Grande Valley Coalition for Mexican American Studies for K-12 that provides guidance for development and teaching of MAS high school social studies courses. Gonzales is a co-founder of Refusing to Forget, a national award winning public history project that focuses on the history of state-sanctioned killings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas during the 1910s. He participated with hundreds of other advocates for the successful creation of a high school Mexican American social studies course in Texas. He also helped lead a team of scholars in producing a report and providing testimony to have a proposed Mexican Americans Studies textbook rejected because of its racist depiction of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Gonzales has published op-ed pieces related to immigration, Mexican American Studies, race and racism in the Austin American Statesman, the San Antonio Express, and the McAllen Monitor.
John Morán González is the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of American and English Literature and Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He attended Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude with an A.B. in English literature. He earned an M.A. degree and a Ph.D. in American literature, both from Stanford University. He is author of Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American Literature and The Troubled Union: Expansionist Imperatives in Post-Reconstruction American Novels. He is also editor of The Cambridge Companion to Latina/o American Literature, published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. He is co-editor (with Laura Lomas) of The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature (2018), which was selected as a 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title.
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs is a Professor in Modern Languages and Women and Gender Studies, and the Theiline Pigott McCone Chair. She was formerly the Director for The Center for The Study of Justice in Society at Seattle University. She is a poet, critic, cultural worker and mother. She is the author/editor of eight books of poetry, criticism and culture, and multiple articles, encyclopedia entries, opinion pieces. She received her MA and PhD from Stanford University, and studied Masters degree work in Mexico, Spain, France, Portugal and Brazil. She is first editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia and single editor of Rebozos de Palabras: An Helena María Viramontes Reader, Communal Feminisms: Chicanas, Chilenas, and Cultural Exile (Lexington Books) as well as Word Images: New Perspectives on Canícula and other works by Norma Elia Cantú (University of Arizona Press). She has recently revised the Spanish translation of The Moths and Other Stories by Helena María Viramontes (Arte Público Press). She also authored the published and forthcoming poetry collections: The Runaway Poems (Finishing Line Press), How Many Indians Can We Be? (Flowersong Press). She is the author of A Most Improbable Life and The Plastic Book. She has presented her work all over the world, multilingually, and specializes in expanding subjectivity. She recently served as a Commissioner for the Arts for the state of Washington.
Tanya Katerí Hernández is Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law and Associate Director & Head of Global and Comparative Law Programs and Initiatives, Fordham University School of Law, Center on Race, Law & Justice. She received her A.B. from Brown University, and her J.D. from Yale Law School. Professor Hernández studies comparative race relations and anti-discrimination law, and her work in that area has been published in numerous university law reviews such as Cornell, Harvard, N.Y.U., U.C. Berkeley, Yale and in news outlets like the New York Times. Her books include Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response (including Spanish and Portuguese translation editions), Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination, and Brill Research Perspectives in Comparative Law: Racial Discrimination. Her most recent publication is the book Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality. Professor Hernández is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute, and the Academia Puertorriqueña de Jurisprudencia y Legislación. Hispanic Business Magazine selected her as one of its annual 100 Most Influential Hispanics. Professor Hernández serves on the editorial boards of the Revista Brasileira de Direito e Justiça/Brazilian Journal of Law and Justice, and the Latino Studies Journal published by Palgrave-Macmillian Press.
Tony Mata is the head of musical theatre at the University of Florida. In 2017 Professor. He is also the Executive Producer and Director of a documentary, Theatre of Rice and Beans which is a retrospective look at New York Latino Theatre and features Miriam Colon, Rene Buch and Max Ferra. For three seasons, Mr. Mata served as Producing Artistic Director of Central Ohio’s leading and oldest professional summer theatre, Weathervane Playhouse. He was the Founding Artistic Director of Florida’s First Coast Arts Festival in St. Augustine, Florida and was the host of Gallery, a television show devoted to the Arts in North Florida produced by WUFT/PBS. Mata holds an MFA in Musical Theatre from San Diego State University. He has directed, choreographed, and performed in over 300 plays, musicals, operas and cabarets in New York, Off-Broadway, and in regional theatre. His regional credits include The Kennedy Center, the Old Globe Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars, Stages Repertory, San Diego Opera, The Houston and San Diego Gilbert and Sullivan Companies, and The Lambs Players. In New York, Mata has worked with the renowned Circle Repertory Theatre, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, The Lincoln Center Summer Festival, New Dramatists, Riverside Shakespeare, INTAR and the Obie Award winning Repertorio Español. Mata is a proud member of Actor’s Equity Association, Stage Directors and Choreographers and the American Guild of Musical Artists. He is the recipient of seven Latin ACE Awards, including Best Director and Best Production, and four HOLA Awards (Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors). In 2014 he was awarded Teacher/Scholar of the year in the College of the Arts at the University of Florida, and in 2017 Professor Mata was awarded the University of Florida Presidential Medallion, Provost Preeminence Award and inducted into The College of Fellows of American Theatre.
Lara Medina, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge where she teaches courses in Chicanx history and Chicanx spirituality and religious diversity. She earned her doctorate from Claremont Graduate University in American History and a MA in Theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Her recent co-edited book with Martha R. Gonzales is titled Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Reflections and Healing Practices (Arizona University Press, 2019). Her first book, Las Hermanas: Chicana and Latina Religious Political Activism (Temple University Press, 2004) won a Choice Book Award. Other chapter publications focus on Chicana feminist spirituality and the Chicanx expression of Días de los muertos. She is first generation college educated and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now resides in Los Angeles County.
Louis Mendoza is Director of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies, where he is also a Professor of Latina/o literary and Cultural Studies. Louis received his Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Ethnic and Third World Literatures from the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include Chicana/o Literary and Cultural studies, U.S. immigration literature, prison literature, and oral histories. He is the author of A Journey Around Our America: A Memoir on Cycling, Immigration, and the Latinoization of the U.S., Conversations Across Our America: Talking About Immigration and the Latinoization of the U.S., and Historia: The Literary Making of Chicana and Chicano History, as well as the editor of raúlrsalinas and the Jail Machine: My Weapon is My Pen, and the co-editor of Crossing Into America: The New Literature of Immigration and Telling Tongues: A Latino Anthology on Language Experience. He is also the director of a short film based on his research entitled, A Journey Across Our America: Observations and Reflections on the Latinoization of the U.S. He is lead editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina/o Literature (forthcoming 2018) and he is compiling an (auto)biography of raúlrsalinas, a project he was collaborating with the poet on before his death in 2008.
Chon A. Noriega is a Professor in the UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media. He is also Director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and Adjunct Curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He has published eighteen books on Chicano/Latino media, performance, and visual art. Noriega is co-founder of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP, established in 1999) and served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Independent Television Service (ITVS). He has helped recover and preserve independent films and video art, including the first Chicano-directed feature film, Please, Don’t Bury Me Alive! (1976), which was added to the National Film Registry in 2014. In addition to his work in media, Noriega has curated numerous art exhibitions, including: Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, L.A. Xicano (four concurrent exhibitions at three museums in 2011-12), and Home—So Different, So Appealing (2017-18) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He is editor of A Ver: Revisioning Art History, an award-winning series on individual Latina/o artists, which now has ten books in print.
Mariana Ortega is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department and Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities at Penn State University. Her main areas of research and interest are Women of Color Feminisms, in particular Latina Feminisms, 20th Continental Philosophy, Phenomenology (Heidegger), Philosophy of Race, and Aesthetics. Her research focuses on questions of self, identity, and sociality, as well as visual representations of race, gender, and sexuality. She is co-editor with Linda Martín-Alcoff of the anthology Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader (SUNY, 2009) and author of In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self (SUNY, 2016). She is the founder and director of the Roundtable on Latina feminism, a forum dedicated to discussions of Latina and Latin American feminisms.
Rafael Pérez-Torres, a Professor of literatures in English at UCLA, has published numerous articles on Chicano/a literature and culture, postmodernism, multiculturalism, and contemporary American literature in such journals as Cultural Critique, American Literary History, Genre, Aztlán, and American Literature. He has authored three books: Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins (Cambridge University Press); Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture (University of Minnesota Press); and To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back: Memories of an East L.A. Outlaw written with Ernest López (University of Texas Press). His most recent projects examine embodied racialized discourses in UNESCO World Heritage sites and the formation of historical memory and futurity in Chicanx culture.
Ramón Rivera-Servera is Dean and Professor in the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. For over 20 years, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera has been a scholar focused on the ways the arts contribute to social transformation—from the emergence of collective identities and politics facilitated by media and performance cultures to the activation of art-based methodologies to address moments of collective crisis. He has produced award-winning scholarship, developed curatorial and arts development practices and platforms and advanced a significant portfolio of externally funded practice-based projects focused on the ways the arts can help us become a more intentionally collaborative and ethical society. Rivera-Servera has been specifically focused on how the arts generated from queer Latinx, Caribbean, Mexican and Afrodiasporic contexts across North America advance critical knowledges that build and sustain community through creative practice. He is author of Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2012), a study of the role performance played in the development of Latina/o queer publics in the United States from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. The book received the 2013 Lambda Literary Foundation Book Award (LAMMY) in the LGBT Studies, the 2013 Book Award from the Latino Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association, the 2013 Outstanding Publication Award from the Congress on Research in Dance, the 2013 Honorable Mention for Best Book from the Association of Latino and Latina Anthropologists and a Special Citation for the 2012 de la Torre Bueno Book Prize in Dance Studies from the Society of Dance History Scholars.
Dr. Andrea Romero has a Ph.D. in Applied Social Psychology, and is Fitch Nesbitt Professor in Family Studies and Human Development at the University of Arizona. She has affiliated positions in Mexican American Studies, Gender & Women Studies, Latin American Studies, Psychology, and Public health. Dr. Romero has a strong interdisciplinary background in social psychology, Latino/a Psychology, family studies and human development. Dr. Romero has written two books on Latino adolescent health “Youth-Community Partnerships for Adolescent Alcohol Prevention” and “Preventing Adolescent Depression and Suicide Among Latinas”. Her research primarily examines social, cultural, and familial factors that are associated with adolescent health and development. A goal of her work is to improve the health of young people, and she has worked toward this goal in partnership with youth and community leaders. She uses a participatory action research methodological strategy in most of her work in order to center youth and community voices. Her current funded work by the Spencer Foundation is examining how perceptions of equality are associated with civic engagement among young adults.
Former Advisory Board Members
Eliana S. Rivero (University of Arizona, Tucson), 2017-2020.
Alvina Quintana (University of Delaware), 2017-2020.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes (University of Michigan), 2017-2020.