Faculty Interview

JOINED THE DEPARTMENT

2018

BIO

Laura Muñoz studies the people and histories of Mexican American, Chicanx, and Latinx communities in the United States with an emphasis on race, gender, and education in the American West. She often says, as she learned from la raza in Indiana, that “Aztlán is everywhere.” Understanding the North American migrations of Mexican-heritage people and the places they call home has intrigued Muñoz since she was a young person and learned about her own South Texas history. This concern informs her inquiries about recovering and recuperating Chicanx/Latinx history, especially in places and among populations who remain understudied. In her recent book, Desert Dreams: Mexican Arizona and the Politics of Educational Equality (University of Pennsylvania Press, December 2023), Muñoz explores how Mexican Americans embraced public schools as a conduit to political access and cultural preservation in the face of Americanization in the century following the Mexican American War. Desert Dreams reveals how they challenged the structure of “Juan Crow,” the unofficial segregation of Mexican-heritage people in the United States. It explains how their civil rights politics influenced the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the passage of the Bilingual Education Act (1968), both of which significantly improved the educational outcomes of Mexican American children across the nation.

Prior to joining UNL, Muñoz held the Joe B. Frantz Associate Professorship of American History at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi – a Hispanic and Minority Serving Institution in her hometown.

TEACHING

• HIST 111: American History after 1877
• HIST 112: History of the U.S. Present
• HIST 189H: University Honors Seminar – Immigrant America
• HIST 250: The Historian’s Craft
• HIST 357 / ETHN 357: Mexican American History
• HIST 397 / ETHN 397: Special Topics: U.S. Latina/o History (Honors)
• HIST 950: Graduate Seminar in Reading and Writing History

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

• “Civil Rights, Educational Inequality, and Transnational Takes on the US History Survey,” History of Education Quarterly 56, no. 1 (February 2016), 140-148.
• “Romo v. Laird: Mexican American School Segregation and the Politics of Belonging in Arizona,” Western Legal History 26, nos. 1-2 (2013), 97-132.
• “Ralph Estrada and the War against Racial Prejudice in Arizona,” in Leaders of the Mexican American Generation: Biographical Essays, ed. Anthony Quiroz (Denver: University of Colorado Press, 2015), 277-299.
• “Hijacks and Hijinks on the U.S. History Review Committee,” with Julio Noboa (University of Texas, El Paso), in Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over Standards in Texas and the Nation, ed. Keith A. Erekson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 41-60.

SELECTED HONORS AND AWARDS

• William and Edwyna Gilbert Award for the Best Article on Teaching History, American Historical Association, 2017
• National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, Washington, D.C., 2011
• Claude A. Eggertsen Dissertation Prize, History of Education Society, 2007

EXPERTISE/AREAS OF STUDY

• Chicana/o History
• North American West
• The History of Education
• Oral Narratives
• Latina/o Studies