Guest Lecture: Righting Chicana History – by Dr. Antonia Castaneda

In this presentation, Dr. Castaneda will describe the development of the field of Chicana History/Chicana Studies and provide an overview of the first generation of Chicana historians who, against tremendous odds, founded this academic discipline during the 1970s-1990s.

Tejana born Chicana Feminist Historian Antonia I. Castañeda is a retired Professor of History.  Castañeda held appointments in the Department of Chicana/o Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and in the Departments of History, at the University of Texas at Austin and at St. Mary’s University, in San Antonio. Author of the prize winning article, “Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History,” she is former co-editor of the Chicana Matters Book Series with UT Press, and of the anthology, Gender on the Borderlands: The Frontiers Reader (2003-2004) See also Three Decades of Engendering History: Selected Works of Antonia I. Castañeda, edited by Linda Heidenreich (University of North Texas Press, 2015). Castañeda is the recipient of the 2007 Scholar of the Year award from National Association for Chicano and Chicana studies. She is a member of the Scholars Advisory Board of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project; served on the Board of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center; is former Chair of the San Antonio Commission on Literacy; and volunteers with the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. The Mexican American Defense and Education Fund honored her with MALDEF’s Community Achievement Award in 2015.  Castañeda received her BA from Western Washington State College, MA from the University of Washington, and Ph.D. from Stanford University.