Miroslava Chavez-Garcia
Miroslava Chávez-García is Professor of History at UCSB and holds affiliations in the Departments of Chicana/o Studies, Feminist Studies, and Latin American and Iberian Studies. She is currently the Faculty Director of the McNair Scholars Program. Author of Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s (University of Arizona Press, 2004) and States of Delinquency: Race and Science in the Making of California’s Juvenile Justice System (University of California Press, 2012), Miroslava’s most recent book, Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), is a history of migration, courtship, and identity as told through more than 300 personal letters exchanged across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In addition to her books, Miroslava has published numerous articles on related topics of migration, juvenile justice, and Chicana history as well as on mentoring young scholars of color in academia.
Miroslava has also received awards and fellowships from various institutions, including the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University, Ford Foundation for Diversity, and Organization of American History (OAH) and the Committee for the Germany Residency Program, which awarded her a residency at the University of Tübingen in 2016. In 2017, Miroslava received the Western Association of Women's Historians Judith Lee Ridge prize for the best article by any member of the organization for “Migrant Longing, Courtship, and Gendered Identity in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” published by the Western History Quarterly in Summer 2016. In November 2017, that same essay received the Bolton-Cutter Award from the Western History Association for the best article on Spanish Borderlands history.
Miroslava was born on the U.S.-Mexico border, in Mexicali, Baja California, and was raised in San Jose, California, where she attended K-12, graduating from Notre Dame, San Jose in 1986. She attended UCLA for B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., completing her degree in 1998. She still has family in San Jose and visits as often as possible.
Supervisors: PhD Adivsor: Norris Hundley, jr., UCLA
Miroslava has also received awards and fellowships from various institutions, including the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University, Ford Foundation for Diversity, and Organization of American History (OAH) and the Committee for the Germany Residency Program, which awarded her a residency at the University of Tübingen in 2016. In 2017, Miroslava received the Western Association of Women's Historians Judith Lee Ridge prize for the best article by any member of the organization for “Migrant Longing, Courtship, and Gendered Identity in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” published by the Western History Quarterly in Summer 2016. In November 2017, that same essay received the Bolton-Cutter Award from the Western History Association for the best article on Spanish Borderlands history.
Miroslava was born on the U.S.-Mexico border, in Mexicali, Baja California, and was raised in San Jose, California, where she attended K-12, graduating from Notre Dame, San Jose in 1986. She attended UCLA for B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., completing her degree in 1998. She still has family in San Jose and visits as often as possible.
Supervisors: PhD Adivsor: Norris Hundley, jr., UCLA
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Books by Miroslava Chavez-Garcia
For nearly forty years, Ruiz has produced scholarship that has provided the foundation for a rich and nuanced understanding of the ways in which Chicanas and Latinas negotiate the structures impinging on their everyday lives. From challenging familial, patriarchal cultural norms, building interethnic social networks in the neighborhood and workplace, organizing labor unions, to fighting gender and racial discrimination in the courts, at work, the schools, and the streets, Ruiz’s studies have examined the countless struggles, roadblocks, and victories Chicanas and Latinas have faced in the twentieth century and beyond. The articles in this book are organized chronologically to reflect the evolution of Ruiz’s intellectual contributions as well as her commitment to integrating feminist history, theory, and methodology, and show how she has generously offered insights, reflections, and humor in helping us define and shape who we are as mujeres, Chicanas, Latinas, scholars, teachers, and mentors.
With its narrative flow and engaging prose, Ruiz’s scholarship connects with academic and public audiences and this collection fulfills a much-needed demand in the teaching of women’s, Chicana/o, and Latina/o history.
Drawing upon a personal collection of more than 300 letters exchanged between her parents and other family members across the U.S.-Mexico border, Miroslava Chávez-García recreates and gives meaning to the hope, fear, and longing migrants experienced in their everyday lives both "here" and "there" (aqui y alla). As private sources of communication hidden from public consumption and historical research, the letters provide a rare glimpse into the deeply emotional, personal, and social lives of ordinary Mexican men and women as recorded in their immediate, first-hand accounts. Chávez-García demonstrates not only how migrants struggled to maintain their sense of humanity in el norte but also how those remaining at home made sense of their changing identities in response to the loss of loved ones who sometimes left for weeks, months, or years at a time, or simply never returned.
With this richly detailed account, ranging from the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s to the emergence of Silicon Valley in the late 1960s, Chávez-García opens a new window onto the social, economic, political, and cultural developments of the day and recovers the human agency of much maligned migrants in our society today.
Miroslava Chávez-García is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Papers by Miroslava Chavez-Garcia
For nearly forty years, Ruiz has produced scholarship that has provided the foundation for a rich and nuanced understanding of the ways in which Chicanas and Latinas negotiate the structures impinging on their everyday lives. From challenging familial, patriarchal cultural norms, building interethnic social networks in the neighborhood and workplace, organizing labor unions, to fighting gender and racial discrimination in the courts, at work, the schools, and the streets, Ruiz’s studies have examined the countless struggles, roadblocks, and victories Chicanas and Latinas have faced in the twentieth century and beyond. The articles in this book are organized chronologically to reflect the evolution of Ruiz’s intellectual contributions as well as her commitment to integrating feminist history, theory, and methodology, and show how she has generously offered insights, reflections, and humor in helping us define and shape who we are as mujeres, Chicanas, Latinas, scholars, teachers, and mentors.
With its narrative flow and engaging prose, Ruiz’s scholarship connects with academic and public audiences and this collection fulfills a much-needed demand in the teaching of women’s, Chicana/o, and Latina/o history.
Drawing upon a personal collection of more than 300 letters exchanged between her parents and other family members across the U.S.-Mexico border, Miroslava Chávez-García recreates and gives meaning to the hope, fear, and longing migrants experienced in their everyday lives both "here" and "there" (aqui y alla). As private sources of communication hidden from public consumption and historical research, the letters provide a rare glimpse into the deeply emotional, personal, and social lives of ordinary Mexican men and women as recorded in their immediate, first-hand accounts. Chávez-García demonstrates not only how migrants struggled to maintain their sense of humanity in el norte but also how those remaining at home made sense of their changing identities in response to the loss of loved ones who sometimes left for weeks, months, or years at a time, or simply never returned.
With this richly detailed account, ranging from the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s to the emergence of Silicon Valley in the late 1960s, Chávez-García opens a new window onto the social, economic, political, and cultural developments of the day and recovers the human agency of much maligned migrants in our society today.
Miroslava Chávez-García is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.