Faculty Interview - Laura K. Muñoz

Department of History Author

06/03/2019 Added

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This is an interview with Prof. Laura K. Muñoz

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[00:00:05.240]My name is Laura Munoz.
[00:00:06.650]I like to tell my students that my parents
[00:00:09.250]gave me two names: Laura Catherine Munoz in English
[00:00:12.610]and Laura Catarina Munoz in Spanish.
[00:00:14.970]So I grew up with both names in a bilingual household.
[00:00:18.030]I think that drives my interest in Mexican American history
[00:00:21.070]and I teach Mexican American history as well as
[00:00:24.200]Latino/Latina courses here at the university.
[00:00:26.970]I'm also interested in beginning the process of mentoring
[00:00:31.420]doctoral students to the Phd with a specific interest
[00:00:35.390]in Mexican American or Latinx/Chicana-o history
[00:00:41.840]and I'm very excited about the possibility
[00:00:44.850]of bringing and helping the current students
[00:00:48.260]who are here pursue this new investigation
[00:00:52.050]of Latinx/US America if you will.
[00:01:00.679]My current project is actually an old project.
[00:01:03.780]I've spent a lot of time working on it.
[00:01:05.440]It's about the history of Mexican Americans in Arizona
[00:01:09.840]and I'm particularly excited about it
[00:01:12.070]because this history predates World War II.
[00:01:14.990]So I'm looking at, specifically, the way
[00:01:17.700]that Mexican Americans engaged the state
[00:01:20.050]through education from
[00:01:23.890]or in the posts conquest era, so about 1870
[00:01:26.693]to about the beginnings of World War II.
[00:01:30.045]What's been exciting about it is that
[00:01:32.470]throughout those generations of Mexican American
[00:01:35.040]experience in Arizona, these people who I call
[00:01:37.830]the Arizonences have been actively negotiating
[00:01:42.670]with the state to secure not only their political rights
[00:01:45.980]but their educational rights and civil rights.
[00:01:48.130]So what I try to show in my work is how education
[00:01:51.920]is integral to the civil rights project
[00:01:53.990]that's been in process and has been engaged
[00:01:58.950]since the 1870's.
[00:02:06.030]In terms of contributions, we have as scholars,
[00:02:09.890]historians of education, we've begun to look at the ways
[00:02:15.420]Mexican Americans have been educated in the United States,
[00:02:18.130]and we know for the most part, the majority of people
[00:02:21.117]before 1950 had very little access to education.
[00:02:25.370]What my work is attempting to show is that
[00:02:27.433]within that small minority of educated Mexican Americans,
[00:02:32.630]there's been a pro active interest in civil rights
[00:02:36.260]and so my major contribution is to identify this population
[00:02:40.520]which, in the past, has been remote.
[00:02:43.520]One of the ways that I've gone about identifying
[00:02:45.510]these people is to turn to sources.
[00:02:47.790]So, I brought a couple of sources with me
[00:02:50.890]that sort of identify who these individuals might be.
[00:02:54.150]And I turn to yearbooks
[00:02:55.830]in the state of Arizona, for example.
[00:02:57.720]This is the 1939 or 38 issue
[00:03:02.490]of the Tempe Normal School
[00:03:04.980]Arizona State Teacher's College Yearbook.
[00:03:07.840]And in it, you see here a group called Los Conquistadores.
[00:03:11.940]And this is a group of Spanish speaking Mexican American
[00:03:15.200]students who formed an organization
[00:03:17.090]at this particular university.
[00:03:18.870]And what's so important about them is that their club
[00:03:22.770]might be the first Mexican American organization
[00:03:28.760]for Mexican American students.
[00:03:31.010]Prior to the organization of this group,
[00:03:33.450]which began as early as 36 or 37,
[00:03:36.480]there was a Spanish club at the university,
[00:03:39.080]but what this club did was to shift the congregation
[00:03:42.800]of Mexican Americans out of the Spanish club
[00:03:45.270]into a club that specifically looked
[00:03:47.000]at Mexican American civil rights and education issues.
[00:03:50.320]So my goal is to show that amongst the small minority
[00:03:53.910]there was pro active civil rights,
[00:03:58.190]what some would say incipient civil rights action
[00:04:01.810]taking place in universities across the Southwest.
[00:04:10.642]In terms of my research intersecting with teaching,
[00:04:13.610]one of the things I get excited about is that
[00:04:16.520]students who have no framework for understanding
[00:04:18.560]the Mexican American past don't realize that
[00:04:22.002]our history is quite old.
[00:04:25.160]So in terms of my teaching, I feel pretty excited
[00:04:28.250]about going back to the 19th century
[00:04:31.090]and introducing students to movers and shakers
[00:04:34.364]within Mexican American communities in the time period.
[00:04:37.610]If you think about contemporary students
[00:04:39.390]and the issues related to immigration and Dreamers
[00:04:42.330]and DACA, students think that they're probably
[00:04:45.430]amongst the first generations who have encountered
[00:04:48.080]this engagement with the state over immigration,
[00:04:50.580]but in fact we know that students at the university level,
[00:04:55.736]students in the elementary school levels
[00:04:58.580]have been dealing with these same issues
[00:05:00.130]over the generations.
[00:05:01.130]So to be able to help students understand
[00:05:02.990]that their contemporary moment has a historical context
[00:05:06.510]that's rooted in Latino/Chicana-o experience
[00:05:10.976]within the United States, I think is an important
[00:05:14.260]contribution in my teaching.
[00:05:16.360]I love that moment when students realize
[00:05:19.060]that they're not the first.
[00:05:20.520]I remember learning that myself from my own mentor
[00:05:23.903]that I wasn't the first or the smartest Mexicana
[00:05:27.620]to ever make it to the university.
[00:05:29.480]That this journey has been a journey of generations
[00:05:32.660]across centuries of Mexican Americans attempting
[00:05:37.360]not only to succeed in American society,
[00:05:40.180]but to build important lives for themselves.

Faculty Interview - Laura K. Muñoz

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Faculty Interview - Laura K. Muñoz

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