I’m a historian, an archivist, and a teacher, and I’ve never been very good at keeping those in separate boxes.
I grew up in the borderlands, San Diego County to be exact, and I’ve spent my career chasing the questions that love of place and space hands you early: Who gets to move? Who gets stopped? And who gets written down? What does is mean to be a fronteriza? My research follows people, paper, and the machines built to sort them across the North American West, from the cotton camps of the San Joaquin Valley to the line at Nogales. My public history work tries to make sure the next archive gets built differently: with communities, not just about them.
Here you’ll find my research, teaching, community projects, and CV.
