Broadly speaking, I am a twentieth-century U.S. labor historian with interests in transnational migration, social movements, and history methods. In my first book, titled The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-and-File History of the UFW Movement (UNC Press, 2023), I studied how farmworkers in Southern California’s Coachella Valley (men, women, migrants, residents, Filipino and Mexican) envisioned their future through their involvement in the United Farm Worker (UFW) Movement in the 1960s to 1980s. I draw, from Latinx Studies, Asian American Studies and the historiography on US labor and social movements. I also pair archival research with 200 hours of original oral history interviews and 100 oral histories from existing collections. The Strikers of Coachella narrates a UFW history that transcends its famous leadership and argues that everyday people and their aspirations were of utmost historical significance: they initiated and propelled forward the UFW and they helped determine our contemporary fortunes. History often sits among forgotten peoples.
Job title:
Assistant Professor
Department:
Department of Ethnic Studies
Bio/CV:
Research interests:
Comparative Latino Studies, Historical Methods, Philippine and Filipino American Studies, Social Movement History, United States History