Faculty

Fall 2022 Office Hours

Guadalupe Arellanes ([email protected])
T 9:30AM - 10:30AM, 12PM - 1PM
Email for Zoom link

Karla Cativo ([email protected])
T 9AM - 11AM
KH B3006

Gabriela Fried-Amilivia ([email protected])
TR 5PM-6PM or email for appointment
King Hall D3081G or email for Zoom link

Sandra Jasmin Gutiérrez de Jesús ([email protected])
T 3PM - 5PM
KH C4035

Jimena Laso ([email protected])
R 9:45AM  - 10:45AM
Library S Palmer Wing Rm 2097

Susana Morales ([email protected])
T 2PM-4PM
Library S Palmer Wing Rm 2097 or email for Zoom link

Enrique Ochoa ([email protected])
TR 11AM - 12PM
R 4PM - 6PM
KH C4077A or email for Zoom link

Gabriela Rodriguez ([email protected])
MW 11AM - 12PM
Email for Zoom link

Ericka Verba, LAS Program Director ([email protected])
Hours vary. Please email for appointment.
KH B3006A or email for Zoom link

Alejandro Villalpando ([email protected])
MW 4:30PM - 5:30PM
KH B3006B or email for Zoom link

Faculty 

LAS Director: ERICKA KIM VERBA (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles) [email protected]
Dr. Verba is Director and Professor of Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Her current project is a biograpy of Chilean musician and artist, Violete Parra (1917 - 1967). Her research interests include the history of the cultural Cold War and the role of music in social movements. She has received grants from the National Endowment from the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Fullbright, and the Los Angeles Departmen of Cultural Affairs, and was the recipien of the E. Bradford Burns Award for service to the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies. She was previously a member of the History Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills (2004 - 2015). She is also an accomplished musician and was a founding member of the Los Angeles-based new song groups Sabiá and Desborde. Dr. Verba enjoys spending time with friends and family, walking in nature, music, and more music. 

ENRIQUE C. OCHOA (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)   [email protected]
Dr. Ochoa is a Professor of Latin American Studies and History at California State University, Los Angeles. From 2013-2014 he was the President's Distinguished Professor at CSULA, and from 2006 to 2008, the Michi and Walter Weglyn Endowed Chair of Multicultural Studies at Cal Poly Pomona. He has edited over a dozen books and journals including Feeding Mexico: The Political Uses of Food Since 1910 (2000); Latina(o) Los Angeles: Migrations, Communities and Political Activism (co-editor, 2005); History and Critical Pedagogies: Transforming Consciousness, Classrooms, and Communities, a special issue of Radical History Review (co-editor, 2008); and "Reframing Immigration in the Americas," a special issue of Dialogo: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Latina(o) Studies (co-editor, 2015). He has published several articles on Mexican politics and history, food studies, Latina(o) studies, and critical community-based education. Dr. Ochoa works to link his classes and research to social justice movements to draw on the rich experiences of students and Los Angeles communities. He is a past board member of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Historians Against the War, Latin American Perspectives, and Radical History Review. He is a founder of the Latina/o History Bee and is currently working with local school districts to implement an intersectional ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 classes.

GABRIELA FRIED-AMILIVIA (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)    [email protected]
Gabriela Fried Amilivia (Ph.D. Sociology, UCLA, 2004; M.A. Clinical Sociology, Université de Paris VII-Jussieu, 1993; Licenciada en Psicología, Universidad de la República, Montevideo) is Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University Los Angeles. She has been a Fulbright and Organization of American States doctoral fellow and a United States Institute of Peace Junior scholar, as well as the recipient of Mellon Fellowship for Latin American Sociology. She specializes in social memory, trauma and generations after the Southern Cone post-authoritarian transitions. She has published on social memory and violence, Uruguayan politics of oblivion, and the long-term effects of impunity and the struggle for accountability, and intergenerational transmission work. She is the co-editor of Luchas Contra la Impunidad: Uruguay 1985-2011 (Montevideo: Trilce, 2011) with Francesca Lessa, and “Civil Society and the Resurgent Struggle against Impunity in Uruguay” (IJTJ vol. 7, 306-327, 2013) with Jo-Marie Burt and Francesca Lessa. Her recent article, entitled Sealing” and “Un-sealing” Uruguay’s Transitional Politics of Oblivion: Waves of Memory and the Winding Road to Memory and Justice (1985-2015),is forthcoming in Latin American Perspectives (forth. 2016). Her book State Terrorism and the Politics of Memory in Latin America: Transmissions across the Generations of Post-Dictatorship Uruguay (1984-2004) will be published by Cambria Press (New York, forthcoming, May 2016).

ALEJANDRO VILLALPANDO (Ph.D., University of California, Riverside)   [email protected]
Central American studies; Central American diaspora; racism and state violence; neoliberalism; immigration, U.S. Militarism and imperialism

SANDRA JASMIN GUTIERREZ DE JESUS (Ph.D., University of California, Davis) [email protected] Dr. Gutiérrez de Jesús is P’urhépecha, born and raised in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. She is an Assistant Professor at Cal State LA in the Department of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies and the Latin American Studies Program. Her research interests include, but are not limited to indigenous self-government, comunalidad, linguistic revitalization, indigenous radio and media communications, and cultural autonomy. Dr. Gutiérrez is currently working on a book manuscript grounded on oral histories that interweave personal stories, collective memory, and communal ethics in P’urhépecha communities. She is a founding member of Radio Uekorheni, a community-based radio station located in Huecorio, Michoacán, Mexico, which focuses on the documentation and revitalization of P’urhépecha language and indigenous knowledge systems. Dr. Gutiérrez enjoys spending time with her family, watching horror movies, and embroidering.

 

Associated Faculty

EMILY ACEVEDO (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University)    [email protected]
Department of Political Science
Latin American politics; political and economic development in Latin America; U.S. foreign policy in Latin America; Model United Nations Program

JOSE MANUEL AGUILAR-MORENO (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin)     [email protected]
Department of Art 
Pre-Colombian art and history (Maya and Aztec); colonial art of Mexico; Indian-Christian transculturation; tequitqui art

GASTÓN ALZATE (Ph.D., Arizona State University)    [email protected]
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Mexican and Colombian literature with focus on theater and performance art; Latin American films and popular culture; political and sexual dissidence in contemporary Mexico

BETH BAKER (Ph.D., University of New Mexico)    [email protected]
Department of Anthropology
Latin America with an emphasis on Central America and Mexico; international migration and transnationalism; social movements; ethnicity and nationalism; the state; remittances and economic development; social theory; ethnography

PABLO BALER (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley)    [email protected]
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
20th-century Latin American culture, literature, visual arts

ENRIQUE BERUMEN (M.F.A., University of Southern California, Los Angeles)     [email protected]
Department of Television, Film and Media Studies
Latin American cinema; screenwriting

CRISTINA BODINGER-DE URIARTE (Ph.D., Harvard University)    [email protected]
Department of Sociology
U.S. Latin American relations; Latin America in the U.S. press

WILLIAM BOLLINGER (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)    [email protected]
Latin American Studies program
Caribbean; Central America; Peru; labor studies; U.S.-Latin America relations; comparative history of race relations

JAMES BRADY (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)    [email protected]
Department of Anthropology
Archeological method and theory; Maya ideology; Maya cave archeology; ceramic analysis

MARIO CASTANEDA (Ed.D., Pepperdine University)    [email protected]
Division of Curriculum and Instruction, Charter College of Education
Social and educational success of the Central American community; African legacy of Central America; issues of inter-group relations between ethnic minority groups; museum outreach programs for the Latino community

PAUL DE CASTRO (D.M.A., University of Texas at Austin)    [email protected]
Department of Music
Afro Latin music; Latin American folk and popular music; piano and corneta china performance

RAMON A. CASTILLO-PONCE (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine)    [email protected]
Department of Economics and Statistics
Latin American economies

KATIE DINGEMAN (Ph.D. University of California, Irvine)   [email protected]
Department of Sociology
Unauthorized migration, citizenship & belonging; detention & deportation; Central America

MARÍA DOLORES COSTA (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts)    [email protected]
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
18th-, 19th-, 20th-century narrative

LOUIS ESPARZA (Ph.D., Stony Brook University)    [email protected]
Department of Sociology and Latin American Studies
Political sociology, social movements, Latin America

DIONNE ESPINOZA (Ph.D., Cornell University)    [email protected]
Departments of Chicano(a) and Latino(a) Studies, Liberal Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Chicano(a) and Latino(a) studies; women’s movements and feminisms; cultural and critical theory

EILEEN FORD (Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)    [email protected]
Department of History
Intersection of culture and politics in post-revolutionary Mexico; child population and policies in Mexico; state formation and popular culture in modern Latin America

JENNIFER GARRISON (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)   [email protected]
Department of Geology
Recent volcanic activity and volcanic hazards in El Salvador and Nicaragua

ESTER E. HERNANDEZ (Ph.D. University of California, Irvine)    [email protected]
Department of Anthropology
Latinos in the U.S.; community health; gender; immigration and globalization

BARRY HIBBS (Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin)    [email protected]
Department of Geology
Hydrology and environmental issues; U.S.-Mexico border

KITTIYA LEE (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University)    [email protected]
Department of History
Group identities in Colonial Latin America; Brazil

ALEJANDRA MARCHEVSKY (Ph.D., University of Michigan)    [email protected]
Department of Liberal Studies
Gender, sexuality and migration; immigration policy; neoliberalism, labor, and the welfare state in the U.S. and Latin America

PAOLA MARIN (Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)    [email protected]
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Colonial Latin America, mainly Mexico; contemporary Latin American theater and poetry

OSCAR MARQUEZ (A.B.D, New York University)   [email protected]
Latin American Studies Program
Race and Culture in the Transnational Americas; Borderlands History; Critical Latinx Indigeneity; US Southwest; Modern Mexico; Critical Ethnic Studies; Native American and Indigenous Studies

JOHN J. RAMIREZ (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)    [email protected]
Department of Television, Film and Media Studies
Latin American film; documentary theory and history; queer theory and gender studies; media literacy

GABRIELA RODRIGUEZ (M.A., California State University, Los Angeles)   [email protected]
Latin American Studies Program
Political development in Latin America; US war on drugs policy in Bolivia; Indigenous social movements; Neoliberalism; US foreign policy in Latin America; Latin American politics; Latin American philosophy

WILLIAM ROSALES (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)   [email protected]
Department of Sociology
International Immigration; Race/Ethnicity/Social Startification; Deviance/Crime/Law and Society

MICHAEL SOLDATENKO (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)     [email protected]
Department of Chicano(a) and Latino(a) Studies
Chicano(a)/Latino(a) intellectual history; Chicano(a) student politics

ALEJANDRO SOLOMIANSKI (Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh)    [email protected]
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Latin American literature

AARON HUEY SONNENSCHEIN (Ph.D., University of Southern California)    [email protected]
Department of English
Documentation and revitalization of the indigenous language of Mexico

KATE SULLIVAN (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara)    [email protected]
Department of Anthropology
Democratic and bureaucratic governance, conservation, and development of coastal and marine environments, mediated transnational and regional public forums, law, wild capture and aquaculture fisheries, British Columbia, west coast U.S., southern Chile.

VALERIE TALAVERA-BUSTILLOS (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)   [email protected]
Department of Chicano Studies
Education; Chicano/Chicana studies

MOLLY TALCOTT (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara)    [email protected]
Department of Sociology
Social inequality and change; globalization studies; human rights

CARLOS TEJEDA (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles)     [email protected]
Division of Educational Foundations and Interdivisional Studies, Charter College of Education
Decolonizing pedagogies; critical educational theory; sociology of education

ANGELA VERGARA (Ph.D., University of California, San Diego)    [email protected]
Department of History
Modern Latin America; Chilean history; labor studies

 

Emeritus Faculty

MARJORIE BRAY (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School)
International economic relations; Cuba; Central America; film
[email protected]

TIMOTHY HARDING (Ph.D., Stanford University)
Department of History
Latin America, Brazil, Cuba

JOHN KIRCHNER (Ph.D., University of Chicago)
South America; transportation; tropical agriculture
[email protected]

 

In Memoriam

DONALD BRAY (Ph.D., Stanford University)
U.S.-Latin American relations; Cuba; Chile; Central America.
Obituary from the Clarement Courier