Message from Chancellor Fox: One of UC San Diego’s greatest institutional strengths is the breadth and depth of faculty research on a range of important topics. Each month, Chancellor’s Corner will showcase cross-disciplinary faculty expertise in a specific area. I invite you to learn more about the work of these scholars, and I hope you share my pride in their achievements and their contributions to society.

Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies

Marisa Abrajano
Marisa Abrajano is an Assistant Professor of Political Science.  Her esearch is in the field of American politics, particularly in the areas of campaigns, mass electoral behavior, and race/ethnic politics. She’s interested in examining whether the traditional theories of mass political and electoral behavior can be applied to and are appropriate for an increasingly diverse American electorate.  A large part of her research agenda investigates whether the discipline's established theories on voting, campaigns, and public opinion need to be reassessed in light of the changing racial and ethnic composition of the American public. More…

Robert R. Alvarez
Robert Alvarez is a Professor of Ethnic Studies and Director of California Cultures in Comparative Perspective. His research interests include the application of anthropology to practical problem solving especially regarding minority communities in the United States and their countries of origin. His work includes the continuing study of the settlement and long term accommodation immigrant communities along the California-Mexico Border. He has conducted research in Mexico (Chiapas, Baja California, the Western Pacific States) along the U.S. - Mexico Border, and participated in applied research and training in the southwest United States , Hawaii, Micronesia, and Marianas. More…

Ross Frank
Ross Frank is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies. He is an expert in Native American history, ethnography, and culture, with special emphasis on intercultural contact and culture change. He has historical interests in peoples of the American plains as well as contemporary tribal communities of California and the social and economic history of northern Mexico during the late colonial period. Frank has studied the Spanish settler society and Pueblo Indian change and adaptation during the late Spanish colonial period (1750-1821), and under Mexican and early American Territorial rule. More…

Jorge Huerta
Jorge Huerta is a Professor in the Department of Theatre and holds the Chancellor's Associate's Endowed Chair III. He specializes in Chicana/o and Latina/o theatre and drama, acting and directing and is a leading authority on these disciplines, as well as a professional director. Huerta has researched and written books on Chicano theatre and drama, edited three anthologies of plays, and directed more than 60 plays for professional and university theatres. He also founded El Teatro de la Esperanza, one of the first two major Chicano theatres, and originated the Necessary Theatre series on UCSD television. More…

Jorge Mariscal
Jorge Mariscal is a Professor of Spanish and Chicano/a Literature: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spanish Culture; Chicano/a Studies; U.S. Literature of the Vietnam War. He is also Director of the Chicano/a and Latino/a Arts and Humanities Minor. He is an expert in Latino cultures in the United States, and can speak to topics relating to Mexican American populations, U.S. Latinos and military service, Vietnam war studies (focus on minorities) and Mexican American social movements, especially the Chicano Movement, 1965-75. He has researched and written about Mexican American, Latino, and Chicano cultures and social movements. More…

John Skrentny
John Skrentny is a Professor of Sociology. His research focuses on public policy, law and inequality. He has written two books and edited another on the historical development of laws and policies to protect the rights and opportunities of minorities in the U.S. These studies have included a wide variety of groups, including African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and white ethnics, as well as immigrants, the disabled, gays/lesbians and women of all races and ethnicities. This research has sought to bring a cultural approach to the fields of historical institutionalism and American political development. More…

Ana Celia Zentella
Ana Celia Zentella is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies and one of the foremost researchers in what she has named “anthro-political linguistics.” She is a central figure in the study of U.S. Latino/a varieties of Spanish and English, Spanglish, and language socialization in Latino/a families, and a respected critic of the linguistic profiling facilitated by English-only laws and anti- bilingual education legislation. Her research includes a study of Puerto Rican assimilation to Mexican Spanish in California and a study in conjunction with researchers from COLEF [El Colegio de la Frontera] on the remapping of language, identity, and the border by transfronterizo students who live in Tijuana and study in San Diego. More…

David Gutierrez
David Gutierrez is an Associate Professor of History. He specializes in Mexican-American history, the history of the American Southwest, comparative immigration and ethnicity. He has researched and published in the areas of twentieth century U.S. political history with special emphases on Mexican-American and Mexican immigration history, history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, comparative immigration and ethnic studies, and the history of citizenship and civil rights in the United States. More…

Natalia Molina
Natalia Molina is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies. She is interested in how social and cultural values shape our understandings of issues of disease and health, especially in regards to how they intersect with race and gender. Specifically, she researches the institution of public health and demonstrates how through their programs, discourse, and production of knowledge, public health officials in Los Angeles at the turn of the last century imbued meaning into the categories Mexican, Chinese, and Japanese. More…

** To learn more about other campus faculty scholars and areas of expertise, please visit the searchable UC San Diego Faculty Experts Database at: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/facultyExperts/