简介

David G. García is one of a handful of historians across the country documenting Chicana/o community histories of education. His research and teaching follow three lines of inquiry: (1) Chicana/o teatro (theater) as public revisionist history, (2) the pedagogy of Hollywood's urban school genre, and (3) Chicana/o educational histories. Each of these areas addresses the interconnectivity of history and education in relation to Chicana/o, Latina/o communities in the United States. He has authored and co-authored several journal articles and book chapters in publications such as the Harvard Educational Review, Qualitative Inquiry, and Hollywood's Exploited: Public Pedagogy, Corporate Movies, and Cultural Crisis. His article, "'Strictly in the Capacity of Servant': The Interconnection Between Residential and School Segregation in Oxnard, California, 1934-1954" in the History of Education Quarterly, received an Honorable Mention from the 2014 History of Education Society Prize Committee. García's current book project seeks to contribute to the recovery of Chicana/o educational histories with a critical examination of school segregation in Oxnard, California. Utilizing archival materials and oral history interviews, he analyzes the systematic segregation of Mexican students, which occurred as a commonplace, ordinary way of conducting business within and beyond schools. This research is uncovering a significant link between racial covenants and school segregation, a form of discrimination sorely under-researched in relation to Mexican Americans. As he documents the evolution of mundane racism in Oxnard's dual schooling system, he uncovers parallel and shared efforts of Black and Chicana/o organizers for equity in housing and education. He also chronicles the Soria et al. v. Oxnard School District Board of Trustees desegregation case (1974), which has been described as one of the first, outside of the South, to be decided based on evidence of intentional segregation. García earned his PhD in U.S. history at UCLA, and has been awarded prestigious fellowships including the University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for Achieving Excellence in College and University Teaching. He joins us after five years as an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. There, he was nominated for an Education Department Distinguished Teaching Award and recognized by the UCLA Hellman Foundation with a fellowship award for assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their research.