About
In his own words: “I am currently Deputy to the President for Academic Priorities and Professor of Anthropology and Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin where I hold the C. B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair in U. S.—Mexico Relations. I work in the areas of critical theory, performance studies, semiotics, and historical and cultural anthropology. I am a native of San Antonio, Texas, and received my B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. I am the author of Remembering the Alamo: Memory, Modernity, and the Master Symbol (University of Texas Press, 2002), Los Pastores: History and Performance in the Mexican Shepherd’s Play of South Texas (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), editor of Adina De Zavala’s, History and Legends of the Alamo (Arte Público Press, 1996). In addition, I have published essays in American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, American Literary History, Radical History Review, and in the edited volume, Latino Cultural Citizenship, published by Beacon Press.
In addition to my scholarly work, I have extensive experience in the area of curriculum development and international studies, particularly in Latin America and the Middle East. I oversee UTeach-Liberal Arts, the college’s secondary teacher preparation program in social studies, English, and foreign languages. Related to this is the Muslim Histories and Cultures Program, an education program for high school social studies teachers.
More recently, I have developed the college’s new effort in international affairs, The Global Initiative for Education and Leadership. The initiative is a consortium of UT and partner units aimed at delivering educational and leadership training abroad.”
