Educational Background

• BA History, University of Texas at Dallas, 2010

• MA History, Southern Methodist University, 2012

• PhD student in history, Southern Methodist University

Research Interests:

As a Mexican-American, issues of identity creation have always interested me. Currently I am looking into Tejano participation in the Civil War. Specifically I want to study how participation with the Confederacy or the Union affected how Tejanos self-identified as Americans. Moreover, by using critical race theory as a tool for analysis, I want to explore how these actions by Tejanos related to notions of race at the time. A final point of interest is the transnational relationships between the Civil War and French-intervention in Mexico. Scholars rarely link the two events, but when they do, it has usually been from a diplomatic perspective. Like the political struggles at the time, ethnic Mexicans' identities in the Southwest were in flux. I hope to turn this into my Master's thesis and may continue to explore these issues in a PhD program.