Executive Committee
Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez
Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies
Professor, School of Journalism and Media
mrivas@austin.utexas.edu
Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a professor in the School of Journalism and Media, has served as director of the Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) since 2021. She founded and continues to direct the Voces Oral History Center, in her home department. She has established the competitive CMAS/Voces Collaborative Oral History Fellowship, providing an early career researcher a chance to jumpstart their own work. CMAS’s publications include research on the history of Latinos on the UT Austin campus. In 2024-2025, CMAS organized a memoir-writing workshop that combined CMAS faculty affiliates with community members. Each participant will write one mini-memoir for publication.
Area of focus: Oral History as Journalism; Memoir-writing; Historical Inclusion
Photo Credit.
Jacqueline Avila
Associate Professor of Musicology
jacqueline.avila@austin.utexas.edu
Jacqueline Avila is a musicologist who specializes in film music studies, sound studies, and the intersections of identity, tradition, and modernity in the musical cultures and new media of Mexico, Latin America, and the Latinx community in the United States. Her book, Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity in Mexico’s Época de Oro was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press, Music and Media Series. Dr. Avila’s current projects focus on transnationalism, nostalgia, and cultural identity in Latinx film and streaming media and the musical cultures on the US-Mexico border. Her work has been supported and funded by the UC MEXUS Dissertation Research Grant (2008–2010), the American Musicological Society’s Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship (2009), the UC MEXUS Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014–2015), the University of New Mexico’s Robert E. Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar Award (2016), and the University of Tennessee’s Humanities Center, Office of Research & Engagement, and the College of Arts & Science SARIF-EPPE Subvention (2019).
Area of focus: Expressive Arts
Photo Credit.
Edward Castillo
Associate Professor & Graduate Advisor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
edward.castillo@utexas.edu
Dr. Castillo's current projects include developing deep learning methods for medical image processing, robust methods for computing pulmonary perfusion and ventilation imaging from non-contrast dynamic CT, pulmonary embolism detection from CT-derived functional imaging, and cancer radiotherapy dose-response modeling.
Area of focus: STEM
Photo Credit.
Karma R. Chávez
Department Chair; Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor, Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies
karma.chavez@utexas.edu
Karma Chávez's scholarship is primarily informed by queer of color theory and women of color feminism. Methodologically, she is a rhetorical critic who utilizes textual and field-based methods. She is interested in studying social movement building, activist rhetoric, and coalitional politics. Her work emphasizes the rhetorical practices of groups marginalized within existing power structures, but she also attends to rhetoric produced by powerful institutions and actors about marginalized folks and the systems that oppress them (e.g., immigration system, prisons etc.).
Area of focus: Undergraduate Students
Photo Credit.
Maria Cotera
Associate Professor, Department of Mexican American and Latino/a Studies
maria.cotera@utexas.edu
Maria Cotera holds a PhD from Stanford University’s Program in Modern Thought, and an MA in English from the University of Texas. She is currently an associate professor in the Mexican American and Latino Studies Department at the University of Texas. Cotera's first book, Native Speakers: Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Jovita González, and the Poetics of Culture, (University of Texas Press, 2008) received the Gloria Anzaldúa book prize for 2009 from the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA). Her edited volume (with Dionne Espinoza and Maylei Blackwell), Chicana Movidas: New Narratives of Feminism and Activism in the Movement Era (University of Texas Press, 2018) has been adopted in courses across the country. Professor Cotera is currently working on the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Project, an online interactive archive of oral histories and material culture documenting Chicana Feminist praxis from 1965-1985. She is the lead curator for two public history exhibits: Las Rebeldes: Stories of Strength and Struggle in southeast Michigan (2013) and Chicana Fotos: Nancy DeLos Santos (2017). Cotera has served on the National Council for the American Studies Association (2007-2010), the governing board of the Latina/o Studies Association (2014-2015), the program committee for the National Women’s Studies Association (2017-2018), and the Arte Público Recovery Project Governing Board (2018-present).
Area of focus: Women
Photo Credit.
Edgar Gómez-Cruz
Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Associate Professor, School of Information
edgar.gomezcruz@ischool.utexas.edu
Edgar Gómez Cruz is an Associate Professor at the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin. He has published widely on several topics relating to digital culture in top journals, particularly in the areas of material visual practices, digital ethnography, and critical approaches to digital technologies. His recent publications include the books: Vital Technologies. Thinking digital cultures from Latin America (2022). From Kodak Culture to Networked Image: An Ethnography of Digital Photography Practices (2012), and the co-edited volumes Digital Photography and Everyday Life. Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices (Routledge, 2016) with Asko Lehmuskallio and Refiguring Techniques in Visual Digital Research (Palgrave, 2017), with Shanti Sumartojo and Sarah Pink. His current research focuses on the datafication of everyday life in the Global South.
Area of focus: HSI
Photo Credit.
Alberto A. Martínez
Professor, Department of History
almartinez@austin.utexas.edu
Alberto Martinez is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Most recently, he is the author of Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo & the Inquisition (2018), and, The Media Versus the Apprentice: The Devil Mr. Trump (2019). He is also the author of four other books: The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), on the evolution of myths in the history of mathematics. Science Secrets: The Truth About Darwin's Finches, Einstein's Wife, and Other Myths (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). And previously, he published Kinematics: The Lost Origins of Einstein's Relativity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), and Negative Math: How Mathematical Rules Can Be Positively Bent (Princeton University Press, 2005).
Area of focus: Professor Equal Rights
Photo Credit.
Roxanne Schroeder-Arce
Associate Professor, Drama And Theatre For Youth And Communities; Associate Professor, Center For Mexican American Studies
roxanne@austin.utexas.edu
Roxanne Schroeder-Arce is associate dean of UTeach Fine Arts (Fine Arts Education), where she works with faculty and students leading teacher certification programs in art, music, dance and theatre. She is also an associate professor of Theatre Education in the Department of Theatre and Dance. As well as an administrator and teacher, Schroeder-Arce is an artist-scholar and arts advocate. Her plays for young audiences, including Mariachi Girl and Señora Tortuga, are published by Dramatic Publishing. Her newest published play, Yana Wana’s Legend of the Bluebonnet (co-authored with María F. Rocha), was recently recognized with a Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. She has published articles in journals such as Youth Theatre Journal, International Journal of Education & the Arts, Nakum Journal, and Theatre Topics, as well as chapters in books including Latinos and American Popular Culture and Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature.
Area of focus: Community Liaison
Photo Credit.
Angela Valenzuela
Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy; Department of Mexican American and Latino/a Studies; Center for Mexican American Studies; Curriculum and Instruction
valenz@austin.utexas.edu
Angela Valenzuela is a professor in both the Educational Policy and Planning Program Area within the Department of Educational Administration and the Cultural Studies in Education Program within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin where she also serves as the director of the University of Texas Center for Education Policy. A Stanford University graduate, her previous teaching positions were in Sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1990-98), as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99). In 2007 as a Fulbright Scholar, she also taught in the College of Law at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.
Area of focus: Academic Freedom
Photo Credit.
This caption describes the image above.
Jacqueline Avila
Associate Professor Of Musicology
jacqueline.avila@austin.utexas.edu
Jacqueline Avila is a musicologist who specializes in film music studies, sound studies, and the intersections of identity, tradition, and modernity in the musical cultures and new media of Mexico, Latin America, and the Latinx community in the United States. Her book, Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity in Mexico’s Época de Oro was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press, Music and Media Series. Dr. Avila’s current projects focus on transnationalism, nostalgia, and cultural identity in Latinx film and streaming media and the musical cultures on the US-Mexico border.
Her work has been supported and funded by the UC MEXUS Dissertation Research Grant (2008–2010), the American Musicological Society’s Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship (2009), the UC MEXUS Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014–2015), the University of New Mexico’s Robert E. Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar Award (2016), and the University of Tennessee’s Humanities Center, Office of Research & Engagement, and the College of Arts & Science SARIF-EPPE Subvention (2019).
Area of focus: Expressive Arts
This caption describes the image above.
Edward Castillo
Associate Professor & Graduate Advisor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Castillo's current projects include developing deep learning methods for medical image processing, robust methods for computing pulmonary perfusion and ventilation imaging from non-contrast dynamic CT, pulmonary embolism detection from CT-derived functional imaging, and cancer radiotherapy dose-response modeling.
Area of focus: STEM
This caption describes the image above.
Karma R. Chávez
Department Chair; Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor, Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies
Karma Chávez's scholarship is primarily informed by queer of color theory and women of color feminism. Methodologically, she is a rhetorical critic who utilizes textual and field-based methods. She is interested in studying social movement building, activist rhetoric, and coalitional politics. Her work emphasizes the rhetorical practices of groups marginalized within existing power structures, but she also attends to rhetoric produced by powerful institutions and actors about marginalized folks and the systems that oppress them (e.g., immigration system, prisons etc.).
Area of focus: Undergraduate Students
This caption describes the image above.
Maria Cotera
Associate Professor, Department of Mexican American and Latino/a Studies
Maria Cotera holds a PhD from Stanford University’s Program in Modern Thought, and an MA in English from the University of Texas. She is currently an associate professor in the Mexican American and Latino Studies Department at the University of Texas. Cotera's first book, Native Speakers: Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Jovita González, and the Poetics of Culture, (University of Texas Press, 2008) received the Gloria Anzaldúa book prize for 2009 from the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA). Her edited volume (with Dionne Espinoza and Maylei Blackwell), Chicana Movidas: New Narratives of Feminism and Activism in the Movement Era (University of Texas Press, 2018) has been adopted in courses across the country. Professor Cotera is currently working on the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Project, an online interactive archive of oral histories and material culture documenting Chicana Feminist praxis from 1965-1985. She is the lead curator for two public history exhibits: Las Rebeldes: Stories of Strength and Struggle in southeast Michigan (2013) and Chicana Fotos: Nancy DeLos Santos (2017). Cotera has served on the National Council for the American Studies Association (2007-2010), the governing board of the Latina/o Studies Association (2014-2015), the program committee for the National Women’s Studies Association (2017-2018), and the Arte Público Recovery Project Governing Board (2018-present).
Area of focus: Women
This caption describes the image above.
Edgar Gómez-Cruz
Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Associate Professor, School of Information
edgar.gomezcruz@ischool.utexas.edu
Edgar Gómez Cruz is an Associate Professor at the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin. He has published widely on several topics relating to digital culture in top journals, particularly in the areas of material visual practices, digital ethnography, and critical approaches to digital technologies. His recent publications include the books: Vital Technologies. Thinking digital cultures from Latin America (2022). From Kodak Culture to Networked Image: An Ethnography of Digital Photography Practices (2012), and the co-edited volumes Digital Photography and Everyday Life. Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices (Routledge, 2016) with Asko Lehmuskallio and Refiguring Techniques in Visual Digital Research (Palgrave, 2017), with Shanti Sumartojo and Sarah Pink. His current research focuses on the datafication of everyday life in the Global South.
Area of focus: HSI
This caption describes the image above.
Alberto A. Martínez
Professor, Department of History
Alberto Martinez is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Most recently, he is the author of Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo & the Inquisition (2018), and, The Media Versus the Apprentice: The Devil Mr. Trump (2019). He is also the author of four other books: The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), on the evolution of myths in the history of mathematics. Science Secrets: The Truth About Darwin's Finches, Einstein's Wife, and Other Myths (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). And previously, he published Kinematics: The Lost Origins of Einstein's Relativity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), and Negative Math: How Mathematical Rules Can Be Positively Bent (Princeton University Press, 2005).
Area of focus: Professor Equal Rights
This caption describes the image above.
Roxanne Schroeder-Arce
Associate Professor, Drama And Theatre For Youth And Communities; Associate Professor, Center For Mexican American Studies
Roxanne Schroeder-Arce is associate dean of UTeach Fine Arts (Fine Arts Education), where she works with faculty and students leading teacher certification programs in art, music, dance and theatre. She is also an associate professor of Theatre Education in the Department of Theatre and Dance. As well as an administrator and teacher, Schroeder-Arce is an artist-scholar and arts advocate. Her plays for young audiences, including Mariachi Girl and Señora Tortuga, are published by Dramatic Publishing. Her newest published play, Yana Wana’s Legend of the Bluebonnet (co-authored with María F. Rocha), was recently recognized with a Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. She has published articles in journals such as Youth Theatre Journal, International Journal of Education & the Arts, Nakum Journal, and Theatre Topics, as well as chapters in books including Latinos and American Popular Culture and Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature.
Area of focus: Community Liaison
This caption describes the image above.
Angela Valenzuela
Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy; Department of Mexican American and Latino/a Studies; Center for Mexican American Studies; Curriculum and Instruction
Angela Valenzuela is a professor in both the Educational Policy and Planning Program Area within the Department of Educational Administration and the Cultural Studies in Education Program within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin where she also serves as the director of the University of Texas Center for Education Policy.
A Stanford University graduate, her previous teaching positions were in Sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1990-98), as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99). In 2007 as a Fulbright Scholar, she also taught in the College of Law at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.
Area of focus: Academic Freedom