Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty
- Ph.D., Michigan State University
- Office: JR 121B
- Email: christina.ayala-alcantar@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.2737
- Research Interests: Latinas and Education, K-12 Teacher Preparation, Teacher Educators, Critical Pedagogy, Latina Sexuality
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: Not Teaching
Biography
Christina Ayala-Alcantar received her Ph.D. in 1998 from Michigan State University.
Her Areas of Interest include Latinas and education; K-12 teacher preparation; teacher educators; critical pedagogy; and Latina sexuality.
- Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego
- Office: JR 144B
- Email: martha.d.escobar@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.7216
- Research Interests: Racialized and gendered state violence, immigration and criminalization, incarceration, abolitionist movements, and the reproduction of carceral practices and logics in institutions of higher education.
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Martha D. Escobar is Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge, and former Executive Director of Project Rebound (2020–2024). She received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Her scholarship examines racialized and gendered state violence, immigration and criminalization, incarceration, abolitionist movements, and the reproduction of carceral practices and logics in institutions of higher education.
Escobar is the author of Captivity Beyond Prisons: Criminalization Experiences of Latina (Im)migrants (2016), which examines the intersections of immigration enforcement and the prison system, offering an intersectional analysis of the criminalization of Latina immigrants. The book bridges prison abolition and immigrant justice movements by highlighting their shared struggle against racialized state violence.
At CSUN, Escobar advised the student-led Revolutionary Scholars Project (2016–2024), a grassroots effort led by formerly incarcerated students that helped establish Project Rebound on campus to support formerly incarcerated students in higher education. Through Project Rebound, she helped secure funding to address student housing insecurity and basic needs. In partnership with formerly incarcerated students and staff, she also helped obtain funding for Firme Coding (2022–2026), an initiative that equips formerly incarcerated community members with digital literacy and coding skills to support reentry and expand educational and employment opportunities.
Her current research explores how systems of punishment and surveillance shape educational institutions and examines pathways toward creating more life-affirming and non-carceral environments in higher education.
- Ph.D., Chicana/o Studies, University of New Mexico
- Office: JR 219D
- Email: Luis.esparza@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.4796
- Research Interests: Decolonial Studies, Jotería Studies, Jotería Rural (concept Dr. Esparza coined), Afro-Jotería Rural (concept Dr. Esparza coined), Transnational Activism, Decolonial Methodologies, 2-Spirit, Afro-Mexican Studies, Community-Based Research, Indigenous Methodology, Participatory Action Research, Multimedia Arts and Technology, Critical Media Studies, Experimental Journalism, Social Media Activism, Indigenous Pedagogy, Postcolonial Theory, Rural Studies, Queer Identity Politics, Chicana/o/x History, Mexican Masculinities, and Latin American Queer History
- Available to serve on graduate committee
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Dáanzho Shikee'
Shii'máá, Martina Botello Guerrero mizzhi
Shiiká'éé, Jose Luis Esparza miizhi
Shii'shdázhá Ivan Esparza Botello miizhi
Shii'shdázhá Jose Abraham Esparza Botello miizhi
Shíí Luis Oswaldo Esparza Botello shiizhi
Los Angeles, CA shii'deeshchii
Tototlán, Jalisco, Mexico naashá
Colton, CA Shiigha
Shíí N'de nishíí
Dr. Luis Oswaldo Esparza is originally (ancestrally since the late 1800s) from Tototlán, Jalisco, Mexico, but raised in the Inland Empire region of California. He is also a Citizen of the N'de Apache Nation. He identifies as N'de Apache (Mescalero and Lipan mix) 2-Spirit, Joto, Cuir, Xicano, Mexicano, Nepantlero, and, most importantly, a transnational activist. In 2012, he began his higher education journey at San Bernardino Valley College. Subsequently, he transferred to California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) where he graduated with a BA in Media Studies and an MA in Communication Studies. He concluded his formal education at the University of New Mexico (UNM) where he was the first recipient of a PhD degree in Chicana/o Studies in UNM's history.
Dr. Esparza has been teaching since 2018. Prior to CSUN, he served as a part-time faculty member at various institutions including California State University, San Bernardino; University of New Mexico; and Central New Mexico Community College where he taught Public Speaking; Interpersonal Communication; Introduction to Chicana and Chicano Studies; and Raza, Genders, and Sexualities. His pedagogy style is greatly influenced by decolonial and Native thinkers like Paulo Freire, Frantz Fanon, Gloria Anzaldúa, Kovach, L.T. Smith, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, bell hooks, Enrique Dussel, and Ramón Grosfoguel. With his research, activist work, and methods of teaching, he seeks to humanize and empower himself, his students, and our community in order to liberate and transform our world. He hopes to one day see a world free of Eurocentrism, racism, hierarchization, homophobia, transphobia, machismo, patriarchy, and any other kind of system of oppression. Un mundo Trans-moderno (Dussel, 1993). Un mundo sin fronteras!
His experiences as a Joto, a 2-Spirit individual, have ultimately shaped the direction of his research. Much of his work is centered around decolonial theories and methodologies. That is, de-centralizing European ways of knowing as 'universal knowledge' and centering subaltern and indigenous epistemologies. His primary areas of focus include centering the testimonios of rural Jotería de los ranchos y los pueblos (Jotería Rural), Queer Indigenous studies, Afro-Jotería history, and Queer subversive complicity. His most recent projects involve his transnational activism in Mexico, particularly, the organization of the first-ever Jotería Pride March in the pueblo of Tototlán, Jalisco, Mexico. He is the co-founder of Toto-Diverso and Jotería Transfronteriza Rural and currently serves on the leadership boards of both organizations. Dr. Esparza also dedicates time to write poetry that depicts decolonial and Jotería counter-stories. He has published his scholarly and creative works in various journals and books such as Borderlines, Chamisa, Kalfou, Association of Mexican American Educators, and Somos De Colores. More information on Dr. Esparza can be found on his website.
- Ph.D., Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz
- Office: JR 116
- Email: alicia.estrada@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.2572
- Research Interests: Contemporary Maya Cultural Productions, U.S. Central American Literature, Guatemala, Diaspora, Memory, Feminist and Cultural Studies
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Education:
B.A., University of California, San Diego
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz
Research Interests:
Contemporary Maya Cultural Productions, U.S. Central American Literature, Guatemala, Diaspora, Memory, Feminist and Cultural Studies
Alicia Ivonne Estrada has published on the Maya and Guatemalan diaspora in Los Angeles as well as on contemporary Maya literature, film and radio. She is co-editor with Karina O. Alvarado and Ester E. Hernández of the critical anthology U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles and Communities of Resistance (Forthcoming 2017, University of Arizona Press). Estrada’s work has appeared in Romance Notes, Latino Studies, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, among other journals and anthologies. Her current book project is on the Maya diaspora in Los Angeles.
- Ph.D., History, University of California, Berkeley
- Office: JR 143E
- Email: mgalvan@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.7356
- Research Interests: Latin America, Mexico (esp. 19th century), Borderlands, Political Economy, Port Studies, Transnationalism, Chicano/Latino history, and U.S. imperialism
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Education:
B.A., History, University of California, Berkeley, 2005, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
Ph.D., History, University of California, Berkeley, 2013
Research and Teaching Interests:
Latin America, Mexico (esp. 19th century), Borderlands, Political Economy, Port Studies, Transnationalism, Chicano/Latino history
Dr. Galván is a historian of Mexico specializing in the late colonial and early republican periods. Her research focuses on the history of Mexico’s Northeastern borderlands, particularly the maritime and border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Her work, which has been published in both the United States and Mexico, delves into the rich historical context of the region. In addition to her work as a historian, she has also published three best-selling research methods textbooks with Routledge — Writing Literature Reviews: A Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Proposing Empirical Research: A Guide to the Fundamentals, and Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
- Ph.D., Ethnomusicology, University of Texas, Austin
- Office: JR 145A
- Email: peter.garcia@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.3491
- Research Interests: Southwest Borderlands Music-Cultures including Native-American, Chicana/o, Anglo-American, Afro-American, and "New Mestizo" Immigrant and Indigenous Communities
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Credentials
Dr. Peter J. García completed his Ph.D in Latin American ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin 2001 with a research specialization in Southwest Borderlands music-cultures including Native-American, Chicana/o, Anglo-American, Afro-American, and "new mestizo" immigrant and indigenous communities. His dissertation supervisor was the late Gerard Behague and he also studied with ethnomusicologist Manuel Peña, anthropologist Pauline Strong, and ethnomusicologist Steve Slawek.
García's research interests and teaching include World Cultures and Music, Latin American Musics, Aesthetics, and Cultures, U.S. Indo-Hispano, Chicano, Afro-mestizo, Latin/o and Southwest Mexicana/o folk, classical, popular and protest musics including indigenous sacred dancing. García's publications engage decolonial theory, third world feminism, ritual and diaspora studies, borderlands "new mestiza/o" (differential) consciousness and musical activism, gender/sexuality and queer studies, semiotics, music (auto) -ethnography, the political economy of music, critical pedagogy and global/local perspectives on music.
Dr. García arrived on campus in Spring 2007 and was recently promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 2011. His monograph Decolonizing Enchantment: Echoes of Nuevo Mexicano Popular Musics is forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press in Fall 2011 and is included in the Paso Por Aqui Series on the Nuevomexicano Literary Heritage. This book is a multi-sited ethnographic, oral historical, and at times reflexive investigation of the dialectic of struggle and change in transnational Southwestern Borderlands and U.S. Latina/o music-cultures. This work also features photographs by award winning photographer Miguel Gandert and Echoes an accompanying critical recording of New Mexico music by Enrique Lamadrid.
García was awarded a Fulbright García-Robles grant to complete ethnographic resesarch on the annual peregrinacion (pilgrimage) in Magdalena de Kino (Sonora) beginning in the Summer 2006. Throughout the fellowship, he was in residence at the Universidad de Sonora (Hermosillo) where he lectured and performed music concerts on campus during the Fall 2006.
His earlier field research on a Nuevomexicano or Indo-Hispano ritual dance known as la danza de los matachines, was published in 2009 in an edited volume titled Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos, co-edited by Olga Najera-Ramirez, Norma Cantú, and Brenda Romero. Oral historical research on Colorado borderlands singer Michelle Lobato examines Chicana grounded aesthetics, and was published as a book chapter called “Ay Que Lindo es Colorado” in Hidden Legacies/ Enduring Struggles: Ethnic Histories and Cultural Survival in Colorado (2010) edited by Arturo Aldama and Elisa Facio. García co-authored another forthcoming article with Enrique Lamadrid titled: "Performing Indigeneity in the Nuevo Mexicano Homeland: Antiguo Mestizo Ritual and New Mestizo Revivals, Antidotes to Enchantment and Alienation" which will be included in: Comparative Indigeneities of the Americas edited by Arturo J. Aldama, M. Bianet Castellanos, and Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera.
García also served as co-editor for another volume with Drs. Arturo Aldama and Chela Sandoval, which will also be forthcoming next year. Performing the U.S. Latina and Latino Borderlands challenges readers to engage the profound intercultural psychic, social, and transnational effects generated by U.S. Latina and Latino performance, from testimonio, music, dance, spoken-word, ritual, story-telling, teatro, improvisation, call-and-response, nagualismo and fashion to visual, body, digital and sculptural enactments. Each contributing author introduces readers to performance topics enlivened through a Borderlands Performance Studies method the editors identify as “de-colonizing performatics.” Although Latina/os in the U.S. represent the largest growing community after “non-Hispanic “ Whites, there exists a serious gap in information about Latin@/Chican@ and Indigenous cultural practices and identities. Contributors seek to rectify that lacuna in this thoroughly interdisciplinary volume that boasts established leaders and rising stars from cultural, visual and performance studies, folklore and ethnomusicology. Essays focus on performances generated out of Latin@/Chican@/Indigenous communities throughout the U.S. and intersect various transdisciplines including Latin@/Chican@, Latin American, American, ethnic, womens/gender, media, and queer studies programs and pedagogies.
Since his appointment to the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies in 2006, García continues teaching MUS310 Understanding World Cultures through Music and hopes to teach MUS307 Music From a Global Perspective for the CSUN Music Department. He was also selected to lead an Honors Section of MUS310 during the Fall 2011. García is also a concert and Latin jazz saxophonist, mariachi guitarist/vocalist, and regularly performs Chicana/o solo folk music from Mexico and the Southwest Borderlands. García is currently faculty advisor and co-director of the Mexican (Latin/o) Music Ensemble- a student performing and composition group that explores various forms of Latina/o musical styles and genres through original musical arrangements, compositions, and improvisation providing concerts on and off campus for the local Latina/o and Chicana/o communities. The group also performs for on-campus events and concerts in the Music and Chicana/o Studies departments, and as part of campus outreach to local area high schools.
In addition to serving as faculty advisor and co-director of the CSUN Mexican (Latin/o) Music Ensemble, García also plays saxophone, clarinet, and guitar in the group. The ensemble debuted at the annual on-campus "Dia de los Muertos" (November, 2010) and "End-Dependence" (September, 2010) day festivals, and for an on-campus Memorial service and procession for departed Professor Karen Duran (November, 2010). We also performed "Misa Hispana" by Mary Francis Reza and an entire instrumental set for the wedding sevice and reception of Luis Rodriguez and Elizabeth Gutierrez at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on April 16, 2011. The music ensemble is also busy playing various cultural events and concerts including graduation celebrations, birthday parties or "las Mañanitas", and Mother and Father Day occasions. We are preparing to perform on the World Music Ensemble concert in the Music Department this Fall and have also been invited to play for the College of Humanities graduation ceremonies for Spring 2012 by Dean Elizabeth Say.
García also co-edited the Arizona Biopower issue of the peer-reviewed on-line journal Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life providing insight into state sponsored biopower in the Arizona-México borderlands. When Arizona is brought up many scholars, educational and immigration rights activists across the U.S. just shrug and say “Arizona is crazy” or ”that is Arizona for you”. After leaving our academic appointments at Arizona State University as a means of protesting the ongoing anti-Latino/immigrant and official state sponsered thugery, both editors (Arturo Aldama and myself) strongly believe that Arizona is a bas-relief to a matrix of racialized biopower that seeks to criminalize and denigrate subjects based on fear driven paranoia about indigenous and mestiza/o peoples. We sincerely hope that this issue of Bad Subjects will make a positive difference in highlighting the racism, violence, and anti-immigrant hysteria coming out of Arizona today and point out the role that higher education has played in the copy-cat anti-Latino laws spreading across the nation.
During the Summer 2011, Dr. García was selected to participate in a Summer Institute "Ethnomusicology and Global Culture" June 21-July 2, 2011 at the Music Department at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Summer Institute provided García a wonderful opportunity to “re-think” and “re-theorize” his ongoing investigtaion based on field research on the Fiesta de San Francisco in Magdalena de Kino begun in 2007 under the Fulbright Garcia-Robles Granteeship to Mexico. My initial investigation analyzes the methodological implications within multi-sited ethnography and transnational ritualized peregrinación (pilgrimages). Engaging critical theory presented in Su Zheng’s book: Claiming Diaspora: Music, Transnationalism, and Cultural Politics in Asian/Chinese America, I wish to engage diaspora as part of a larger ritual system illustrating Mexican, Native (Pima/Papago and Yaqui) Indian and Mexican American spirituality and heritage exploring how ritual, pilgrimage, and festival mediate present social and political challenges over the border, immigration and how music and aesthetics express structures of feelings, memories and kinship, and regional heritage. Music in this way helps communities recuperate previous attachments to occupied homeland at the same time mediating imperialist nostalgia, linguistic terrorism, and displacement of cultural citizenship and dislocation of indigenous community. While at Wesleyan, García also developed a special section of MUS 307 (Music From A Global Perspective): Ethnographies of Film Music, Musical Scoring Techniques, Movie Soundtracks, and Global Cinematic Systems. This course explores global soundtracks, scoring techniques, and film history using approaches from ethnomusicology, cultural studies, and film criticism. Students will develop critical thinking and listening skills approaching movie soundtracks as film ethnographies.
Principal Faculty:
Eric Charry (Institute Director), Mark Slobin, Su Zheng, Wesleyan University
Guest Lecturers:
Melvin Butler, Peter Hadley, Maureen Mahon, Maria Mendonça, Alex Perullo, Sumarsam
The Society for Ethnomusicology and the Wesleyan University Music Department are pleased to collaborate for a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in ethnomusicology. We will provide stipend support for the participation of twenty-two faculty from universities, four-year colleges, and community colleges, and three full-time graduate students. Three principal faculty from Wesleyan and six guest lecturers will lead the daily sessions over the course of two weeks.
What happens when music, people, and media move across the globe? What kinds of transformations take place? How has recent technology facilitated such transformations? These are some of the key questions that will challenge us as we look at case studies from around the world, introducing the selected NEH Summer Scholars to new and recent scholarship and developing teaching strategies for incorporating this focus into the curricula of both music and related humanities disciplines.
Dr. Garcia is also co-editor of one of the foundational reference textbooks on popular culture that is utilized in Latin American and U.S. Latina/o studies. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture was released in October 2004. This two volume academic reference tool is designed to provide general research based information on a variety of Latina and Latino popular culture topics and issues that have influenced North American culture.
He enjoys swimming, weight-lifting, reading, traveling and cooking.
Institutional Research
Since his appointment to the Chicana/o Studies Department in 2007, he was invited to speak on a panel along with Dr. Mary Pardo entitled: “Implementing Queer Chicana/o Latina/o Studies in the CSU System” at the 2nd National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Joto Caucus conference at California State University –Los Angeles (October, 2008). This important panel considered the impact of sexuality and queer studies scholarship in Chicana/o Studies and the curricular impact that recent textbooks, media, and scholarship is making in Chicana/o cultural studies.
García is also working with Professor Lara Medina on an undergraduate track in Chicana/o Spirituality within the Department of Chicana/o Studies and is teaching graduate seminars on Chicana/o Arts, Humanities, and Qualitative Methodologies and Transdisciplinary Investigative Approaches. He is also offering two upper division courses in Chicana/o Studies including: CHS 418 Mexicano Culture and Chicana/o Musics and CHS 417 Aztlán 2012: Indigenous Time, Synchronicity, and Dancing Cultures to be offered during Fall 2011 and Spring 2012.
He is currently mentoring Chicano undergraduate McNair Scholars and is masters thesis advisor for several Chicana/o graduate students and serving on numerous Masters thesis committees at CSUN. He also works closely with student members of MECHA de CSUN lecturing, performing, and facilitating on- campus and community sponsored events including Raza Youth Day, Dia de los Muertos, and Dia de la Familia. García also works closely with Professor Marta López-Garza as a member of the committee on "Civil Discourse and Social Change" a transdisciplinary campus wide curriculum featuring a series of lectures, guest speakers, documentary films, and workshops that might help bridge Chicana/o, Womens, Queer, American Indian, African Studies and other forward looking and critical areas of campus interested in encouraging and developing non-violent philosophies central to human rights struggles, political protests, civil discourse, and social change. This ground-breaking curriculum will be taking place on campus led by the Visiting Scholar, Reverand James Lawson, a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was in residence during the 2010-11 at California State University Northridge and will continue working on this initiative during the 2011-12 academic year.
Grants
Garcia was awarded a Fulbright García-Robles grant to conduct research on the annual peregrinacion (pilgrimage) in Magdalena de Kino (Sonora) beginning in the summer 2006. Throughout the fellowship, he was in residence at the Universidad de Sonora (Hermosillo) where he lectured and performed music concerts for undergraduate students during the Fall 2006. He returned to campus mid-year during the Spring 2007 semester.
Books
Decolonizing Enchantment: Echoes of Nuevo Mexicano Popular Musics is forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press in Fall of 2011.
Performing the U.S. Latino Borderlands, an edited volume co-edited with Drs. Arturo Aldama and Chela Sandoval, which should be forthcoming next year.
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture was released in October 2004. This two volume academic reference tool is designed to provide general research based information on a variety of Latina and Latino popular culture topics and issues that have influenced North American culture.
Online Journal Articles
"Violent Ballads as Border Representations: The Aesthetics of Violence in the Mexican and Chicana/o Corrido" in Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life Issue #61, September 2002
"The United States Presidential Election 2008: Bill Richardson and the New Mestizo: A Case Study in Racial Contradictions in Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life Issue 79 2008
Public Lectures and Academic Conference Presentations
On May 3rd, 2011, Dr. García presented a Pre-Concert lecture prior to the Metales M5 Concert in the CSUN Valley Performing Arts Center as part of the Arts@Noon series in the Experimental Theater. This public lecture discussed Latin Holidays in Los Angeles from the Post World War II/Big Band "Swing" era through the paronoid period of McCarthysm and Cold War politics that included "rock 'n' roll," doowop, mambo, danzón, and later Latin soul and funk sounds.
García presented another scholarly paper: "Bailando Para San Lorenzo: Nuevo Mexico Popular Sacred Musics and Ritual Activism in Bernalillo Fiesta Time" at the 54th Annual Society for Ethnomusicology Conference "Borderless Ethnomusicologies" in Mexico City (November, 2010).
Memberships
- Ph.D., Literature, University of California, San Diego
- Office: JR 144C
- Email: ramon.garcia@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.7213
- Research Interests: Visual Culture, Literary Studies
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Dr. Ramón García has a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego.
Ramón García is the author of two books of poetry The Chronicles (Red Hen Press, 2015) and Other Countries (What Books Press, 2010), and a book-length monograph on the artist Ricardo Valverde (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). The Chronicles was a finalist for the Latino International Book Award for Best Poetry Book in English in 2016.
Dr. García’s poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including the Best American Poetry anthology, The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of US-Hispanic Literature, Ambit, The American Journal of Poetry, Los Angeles Review, and Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. His scholarly work has appeared in Critica; Wide Angle; Chasqui: Review of Latin American Literature and Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies.
He has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts residency fellowship from the MacDowell Colony and residency fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ragdale Foundation. He has also been a recipient of a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Ph.D., Psychological Studies in Education, Stanford University
- Office: SQ 289B
- Email: rosemary.gonzalez@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.7248
- Research Interests: Achievement motivation; Child and Adolescent Development; Ethnic Identity; Multicultural Education Pedagogy; Resilience of Youth Placed “At-Risk”
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Education:
Ph.D., 2003, Stanford University, Psychological Studies in Education
Areas of Interest:
Achievement motivation; Child and adolescent development; Ethnic identity; Multicultural education pedagogy; Resilience of youth placed “At-Risk”.
- Ph.D., History, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Office: JR 144A
- Email: gabriel.gutierrez@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.6463
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Participating in Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP)
- B.A., University of California, Los Angeles
- Office: JR 143F
- Email: fermin.herrera@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.3976
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
- MFA, Art
- Office: JR121C
- Email:
- Phone: 818.677.6591
- Research Interests: Chicanx and Latinx Visual Art, Art of the Americas, Spatial Geography, Chicanx Popular Culture, Research and Archival Practices in Contemporary Art, Queer and Feminist Studies, Popular Education and Community Organizing
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
- Ph.D., Education, University of California, Los Angeles
- Office: JR 141A
- Email: jc.lugo@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.4621
- Research Interests: Education of Latino Boys and Men; Gender Equity in Schools; Critical Race Theory in Education; Masculinity Studies; Teacher Education
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
JC Lugo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies and Core Faculty in the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership. His interdisciplinary research examines the schooling conditions of Latino boys and men through the lens of critical race theory, masculinity studies, and queer of color critique. He aims to understand how their sense of identity is negotiated within heteronormative schooling contexts while working to identify intersectional approaches to improve the educational outcomes of Latino boys and men.
Dr. Lugo received his PhD in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was awarded the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and was a fellow with Project MALES at the University of Texas at Austin.
Participating in Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP)
- Ed.D., Education, University of California, Los Angeles
- Office: JR 151A
- Email: theresa.montano@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.6801
- Research Interests: Latino Educational Equity, Critical Multicultural Education, Bilingual/ELL education, Teacher Education
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Education:
Ed.D., 1996, University of California, Los Angeles in Education
Areas of Interest:
Latino Educational Equity; Critical Multicultural Education; Bilingual/ELL education; Teacher education.
- Ph.D., English and Education, University of Michigan
- Office: JR 140
- Email: renee.m.moreno@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.7110
- Research Interests: Literature, Rhetoric and Composition, Race and Ethnicity, Traditions of Story and Storytelling
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Dr. Renee M. Moreno is Associate Professor in the Chicano/a Studies Department at California State University, Northridge where she teaches composition and literature. She is a graduate of the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan and has held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Notre Dame. Professor Moreno has served on the College Section Steering Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English and the Executive Committee of the College Composition and Communication Conference. A 1993 recipient of the College Composition and Communication Scholars for the Dream Award, her research focuses on literature, rhetoric and composition, and race and ethnicity, and draws upon traditions of story and storytelling. She is currently working on a book length project with Artist and Professor Carlos Fresquez, entitled “They want us to march but we want to paint”: Chicano Artists in Denver (1968-1972), which recovers the history of the Chicano arts movement in the city. Professor Moreno has been awarded several grants to support her research, including a research grant from the Colorado Humanities.
- Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Office: JR 116
- Email: alejandro.prado@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.2739
- Research Interests: Critical Globalization Studies, Political Economy, Urban Studies, Labor Studies, China, Los Angeles, Food Politics, Critical Environmental Justice, International Solidarity, Chicanx Identity Formation
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Dr. Alejandro Prado (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies where he brings a humanist social science expertise. His work aims to internationalize the discipline of Chicanx Studies as it engages global capitalism in general through a focus on the direct and indirect connections between Southern California Chicanx/Latinx people and China. Alejandro received his PhD in Chicana/o Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his BA in Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Riverside. In the 2022-2023 he served as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Latin American and Latino Studies Research Center at the University of California, Riverside.
Participating in Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP)
- Ed.D., Education, University of California, Los Angeles
- Office: JR 148
- Email: rosa.furumoto@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.6819
- Research Interests: Environmental Justice, Chican@/Latin@ Parents' Critical Consciousness, Cultural Capital, School Involvement, Use of Chican@/Latin@ Children's Literature with Families for Purposes of Humanization
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Education:
Ed.D., 2001 University of California, Los Angeles in Education
Areas of Interest:
Chican@/Latin@ parents’ critical consciousness, cultural capital, and school involvement; use of Chica@/Latin@ children’s literature with families for purposes of humanization; and urban school militarization.
- Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego
- Office: JR 144E
- Email: stevie.ruiz@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.7355
- Currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Education:
B.A., California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
M.A., San Diego State University
M.A., Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2015
Areas of Interest:
Stevie Ruiz’s interdisciplinary research and teaching focuses on environmental justice, comparative race and ethnicity, critical science studies, and geography. Selected Publications can be accessed here: https://csun.academia.edu/StevieRuiz.
Book Publication
He is author of Stewards of the Land: Race and Reclaiming Environmental Labor in the American West (UNC Press, 2026). https://uncpress.org/9781469693354/stewards-of-the-land/.
- Ph.D., Linguistics, University of Southern California
- Office: JR 151C
- Email: ana.sanchezmunoz@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.4154
- Research Interests: Language Variation and Change, Bilingualism, Language Acquisition, Situations of Language Contact
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
- Ph.D., Cultural Studies, Claremont Graduate University
- Office: JR 121A
- Email: denise.sandoval@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.6489
- Research Interests: Popular Culture and the Arts, Cultural Histories of Los Angeles, Oral History, Community Histories
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Education:
Ph.D., 2003, Claremont Graduate University in Cultural Studies
Areas of Interest:
Popular Culture and the Arts, Cultural Histories of Los Angeles, Oral History, Community Histories
Denise M. Sandoval, Ph.D is a Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge (2002 to the present). She received her doctorate in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University in 2003, her Masters of Arts in Chicana/o Studies from California State University Northridge in 1995, and her Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley in 1993. She was the guest curator/community researcher for two exhibitions on lowrider culture at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles: La Vida Lowrider: Cruising the City of Angels (2007-08) and Arte y Estilo: The Chicano Lowriding Tradition (2000). In December 2009, part of the exhibition La Vida Lowrider traveled to Guadalajara, Mexcio with the Department of Cultural Affairs LA as part of the Guadalajara Feria de Libros where the city of Los Angeles was the guest of honor. She was also a guest curator/writer for a virtual exhibition entitled Lowrider: An American Cultural Tradition for the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives. Her work on lowrider culture was featured in two different documentaries on lowriders (Automaniac and Modern Marvels) for the History Channel and she has written various articles for publication on the lowrider culture: “Cruising Through Lowrider Culture: Chicana/o Identity and the Marketing of Lowrider Magazine” in the book Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture & Chicana/o Sexualities (2003), entries on “lowriders” and “Cholos/as” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States (2005), as well as the chapter “The Politics of Low n Slow/Bajito y Suavecito : Black and Chicano Lowriders in Los Angeles, 1960’s to 1970’s” that is part of the anthology Black and Brown Los Angeles: A Contemporary Reader (November 2013). In May 2012, she co-edited a book with award winning author Luis J. Rodriguez titled Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community for Tia Chucha Press which documents art activism in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. The book was awarded a bronze medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) in June 2013 and also was awarded the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award in December 2013. Her most recent book project is titled White Washing American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies (October 2016), which is a co-edited two volume set published by Praeger, with contributed essays on issues in Ethnic Studies in both K-12 and higher education. The books were recognized as being one of the “Best Reference Titles of 2016” in the category of Social Science by the Library Journal. Currently, she is the guest curator for the exhibition The High Art of Riding Low: Ranflas, Corazón e Inspiración (July 2017 to May 2018) at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition examines “the diverse and complex viewpoints of more than 50 artists who visualize, celebrate and interrogate the lowrider car through a selection of artwork that includes vehicles, paintings, sculptures, and art installations”.
She has been a professor in Chicana/o Studies/Ethnic Studies for over 18 years and teaches courses such as Introduction to Chicano Culture, History of the Americas, History of the Chicana/o and Third World Woman and La Chicana. Her research interests include popular culture and the arts, cultural histories of Los Angeles, oral history and community histories.
- Ph.D., English Studies, Washington State University
- Office: JR 144D
- Email: francisco.tamayo@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.5763
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Dr. Francisco Noé Tamayo is a professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Northridge, where he has served since 2011. His research examines the intersections of language, power, and race, with a focus on equitable writing pedagogies for racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse students. A first-generation college graduate from a migrant farm-working background, Dr. Tamayo earned his Ph.D. in English Studies (Rhetoric and Composition) from Washington State University. His lived experiences as a multiracial and linguistically diverse scholar inform his decolonial and anti-racist teaching practices.
Dr. Tamayo’s pedagogy centers inquiry, action, and reflection, empowering students to interrogate structural inequality and develop their voices as writer-activists whose narratives function as rhetorics of transformational resistance. He teaches across the Chicana/o Studies curriculum and the Writing Program and remains deeply committed to equity-driven education. His career is dedicated to transforming higher education to better serve marginalized communities.
- Ph.D., Mass Communications, Florida State University
- Office: JR 121B
- Email: yarma.velazquez@csun.edu
- Phone: 818.677.2737
- Research Interests: Media Studies, Performance, Political Economy of Media, Puerto Rican Studies
- Not currently accepting graduate students
Fall 2026 Office Hours: TBD
Biography
Dr. Velázquez Vargas received her Ph.D. from the Florida State University (2008) in Communication Studies with an emphasis on gender, media, and queer studies. She has a Master’s in Advertising Management from Michigan State University and a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Her research interests include gender, queer studies, Latina studies and political economy. Her current research explores issues of media representation and sexuality. Moreover, her work examines the manner in which the representations of queer culture in television reinforce the binaries of sex, gender and sexuality.
Dr. Velázquez Vargas teaches Speech Communication and Media Studies courses. Her published work includes: “Materialism, Disposal and Consumerism: Queer Eye and the Commodification of Identity” in Ideological Similarities Between Dating and Makeover Reality Television Shows, and "Marco Said I look Like Charcoal; A Puerto Rican’s Exploration of Her Ethnic Identity" in Qualitative Inquiry.
