Currently Enrolled Students
Karla Larranaga (klarranaga@ucsb.edu)
Veronica Mandujano (v_mandujano@ucsb.edu)
Kristian Vasquez (kevasquez@ucsb.edu)
Alejandra Valencia Medina (alejandra_valenciame@ucsb.edu)
Edward Reyes (edwardreyes@ucsb.edu)
Ricardo Delgado Solis (ricardodelgadosolis@ucsb.edu)
John Jairo Valencia (johnvalencia@ucsb.edu)
Diana Sanchez (dianasanchez@ucsb.edu)
Fabian Pavon (fpavon@ucsb.edu)
Cynthia de la Rosa (cdelarosa@ucsb.edu)
Kathy Palomino (palomino@ucsb.edu)
Damian Yazzie (dyazzie@ucsb.edu)
Karla Gomez-Pelayo (gomez-pelayo@ucsb.edu)
Gabriela Lua (gabrielalua@ucsb.edu)
Alejandra Mejia-Pulido (alejandramejia-pulid@ucsb.edu)
Completed Doctorates
Eddy Alvarez
Dissertation title: Space, Identity, and Memory in Queer, Brown, L.A.: Finding Sequins in the Rubble
Faculty Chair: Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval
Year: 2014
Michelle Baca
Dissertation title: Loss, Rumination, and Narrative: Chicana/o Melancholy as Generative State
Faculty Chair: Francisco Lomeli
Year: 2013
Janett Barragan Miranda
Dissertation title: Hungering for Equality: Mexicans and Mexican Americans from WorldWar II through the Civil Rights
Faculty Chair: Miroslava Chavez-Garcia
Year: 2019
Rosie Bermudez
Dissertation title: Doing Dignity Work: Alicia Escalante and the East Los Angeles Welfare Rights Organization, 1967-1974
Faculty Chair: Miroslava Chavez-Garcia
Year: 2019
William Calvo
Dissertation title: Monsters of Late Capitalism Along the U.S.-Mexico Border: Legends, Epistemologies and the Politics of Imagination
Faculty Chairs: Maria Herrera-Sobek and Francisco Lomeli
Year: 2014
Tomas Avila Carrasco
Dissertation title: Oppositional Performance: A Social-Historical Analysis of the Avant-Garde Comedy Troupe Chicano Secret Service
Faculty Chairs: Mario T. Garcia and George Lipsitz
Year: 2012
Nicholas Centino
Dissertation title: Atomic Chicanas/os: Embodied Memory and The Raza Rockabilly Scene of Greater Los Angeles
Faculty Chair: Inés Casillas
Year: 2014
Carisa Cortez
Dissertation title: Survivors Ink: Self-Transformation, Self-Creation and Healing Through Tattoo
Faculty Chair: Edwina Barvosa
Year: 2013
José G. Anguiano Cortez
Dissertation title: Latino Listening Cultures: Identity, Affect, and Resilient Music Practices
Faculty Chair: Maria Herrera-Sobek
Year: 2012
Juan Sebastian Ferrada
Dissertation title: Latinx Temporalities: The Queer Time of Spanglish, Family, and Latinx Futurity in Santa Ana, California, 2014-2017
Faculty Chair: Inés Casillas
Year: 2018
Amy Foss
Dissertation title: Race, Racialization and the Colonial Conquest of the Santa Barbara Channel Region: Colonial and National Racial Ideological Systems
Faculty Chair: Edwina Barvosa
Year: 2017
Francisco Fuentes
Dissertation title: Bordering Faith: spiritual transformation, cultural change, and Chicana/o youth at the border
Faculty Chair: Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval
Year: 2016
Amber Rose Gonzalez
Dissertation title: Another City is Possible: Mujeres de Maiz, Radical Indigenous Mestizaje and Activist Scholarship
Faculty Chair: Chela Sandoval
Year: 2014
Sara Veronica Hinojos
Dissertation title: Can joo belieb it?": The Racial Politics of Chican@ Linguistic Scripts in U.S. Media (1925-2014)
Faculty Chair: Inés Casillas
Year: 2016
Felicia Rhapsody Lopez
Dissertation title: Mayahuel and Tlahuizcalpanteuctli in the Nahua Codices: Indigenous Readings of Nahuatl Pictoral and Alphabetic Texts
Faculty Chair: Gerardo Aldana
Year: 2016
Jessica Lopez Lyman
Dissertation title: Gendering the Midwest Regional Imaginary: Chicana/Latina Performance in Urban Minnesota
Faculty Chair: Aida Hurtado
Year: 2016
Tomas A. Madrigal
Dissertation title: Agribusiness and Mexican Farm Worker Families in Washington State (1964-2013)
Faculty Chair: Aida Hurtado
Year: 2016
Natalia Villanueva Nieves
Dissertation title: Reading the Latina Soul: Affect and Hegemony in the Hermeneutics of (Trans)National Latina Narratives
Faculty Chairs: Maria Herrera-Sobek and Ellie D. Hernandez
Year: 2019
Ricardo Elias Ortega
Dissertation title: Guided by Great Feelings of Love: Using Photovoice and Critical Pedagogy to Document the Life Experiences of Undocumented Latino/a Students in Higher Education
Faculty Chair: Tara J. Yosso
Year: 2013
Marla Ramirez
Dissertation title: Contested Illegality: Three Generations of Exclusion through Mexican "Repatriation" and the Politics of Immigration Law, 1920-2005
Faculty Chair: Ines Casillas
Year: 2015
Adrianna Santos
Dissertation title: Radical Storytelling: Reading Chicana Survival Narratives
Faculty Chair: Maria Herrera-Sobek
Year: 2014
Cristina Serna
Dissertation title: Deconstructing the Nation: Queer and Feminist Art in Mexican and Chicana/o Social Movements
Faculty Chairs: Chela Sandoval and Horacio Roque Ramirez
Year: 2014
Adrianna Marie Bayer Simone
Dissertation title: "It Was NEVER Fiction:" The Decolonized Voice of Michele Serros
Faculty Chairs: Maria Herrera-Sobek and Francisco Lomeli
Year: 2017
Silvia E. Toscano
Dissertation title: Learning to Heal, Healing to Learn: Sacred Pedagogies and the Aesthetics of a Teaching-Healing Praxis among Chicana and Chicano Educators in Southern California
Faculty Chairs: Tara J. Yosso
Year: 2016
Ester N. Trujillo
Dissertation title:Understanding and Negotiating U.S. Salvadoran Ethnic Identity in the Diaspora
Faculty Chair: Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval
Year: 2017
Jessie Turner
Dissertation title: Mixed and Mixed: Inheritance and Intersectionality in the Identity Formation and Identity Migration of People with Mexican and Other Ethnoracial Backgrounds
Faculty Chair: Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval
Year: 2012
Adanari Zarate
Year: 2020
Magda Garcia
Year: 2021
Paulina Ramirez Niembro
Year: 2022
Alejandro Prado
Year: 2022
Ana Barba
Year: 2022
Marina Chavez
Year: 2022
Aracely Garcia-Gonzalez
Year: 2023
M.A. Papers
Eddy F. Alvarez: ¿Transgénero inmigrante y qué?: Bamby Salcedo, Selfcraft, and the Making of a Transgender Male-to-Female Activist
Jose Anguiano: Listening to California's Missions: Mission Music and the Indigenous Experience in Colonial California
Michelle Baca: Ulcerated, Amputees and the Bodies That Could Save Them:
An Analysis of Alejandro Morales, Oscar Zeta Acosta and John Rechy
Eduardo Blanco: Reconfiguring the Semiotic Operationality of Textual Discourse in John Rechy’s The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez
William A. Calvo-Quiros: Lowriders as Expressions of Chicana/o Vernacular Knowledge
Thomas Carrasco: Days of Troy Oppositional Performance as Cultural Production in Los Angeles' Troy Cafe, 1990-1995
Nicholas F. Centino: From London to East Los’ A Cultural History of La Raza and the Rockabilly Scene
Carisa Prieto Cortez: Inking Identity: A study of Individual and Collective Motivations For Tattoo Among Chicana College Students in California
Amy Foss: Histories of Marginalization, the State, and Dis-Memberings of California Indigenous People: An Oral History of a Barbareño Chumash Elder
Francisco Fuentes : Men and Masculinities in the Maquiladora Shop Floor: A Case Study of one of Central Mexico's Maquiladoras
Amber Rose González: The Labor of Memory: Personal Risks and Collective Concerns in the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Supermarket Strike.
Sara Veronica Hinojos: Re-Visions of Chico and the Man: Chicanos and 1970s Television
Rolando Rene Longoria II: Silence and Femicide in Ciudad Juarez: A Critical, Post-Colonial Study
Felicia Rhapsody Lopez: Mayahuel and Maguey as Teotl in the Codex Borgia: Establishing a Visual Grammar for Reading Directional Tree Panels
Jessica Lopez Lyman: Isolated Vidas : Reclaiming Minnesota Chicana/o Bodies, Sitios y Lenguas
Tomás A. Madrigal: Community Formation at Goleta Barbers: A Case Study of a Mexican/Chicano Barrio Barbershop in Goleta, CA
Ricardo Elias Ortega: Latino Undergraduates Navigating the Undocumented University
Marla Ramirez: “A New Brown Model Minority”? — Undocumented immigrant youth, AB 540, and the federal DREAM Act
Adrianna Michelle Santos: Theorizing Beyond Metaphor to Survival Narrative: Chicana Discourses of Rape and Sexual Violence in Ana Castillo’s So Far From God .
Cristina Serna: "Queer Globalizations": Exploring Transnationalized Feminist Cultures among Queer Chicana, Latina, and Mexican Lesbian Activists and Artists
Jessie Turner: An Impermissible Borderlands: White/Mexican Multiraciality and the Vectors of Identity Formation, Migration, and Chican@ Community Membership.