Communing with the Past, Imagining Our Latina/o Future

Raúl Coronado

University of California, Berkeley

Raúl Coronado is the inaugural President of the Latina/o Studies Association. A native of Texas, he received his undergraduate degree from UT Austin, and his PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. He taught in the English Department at the University of Chicago for nine years before moving to the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley in 2013. His book "A World Not to Come: A History of Latino Writing and Print Culture" (Harvard 2013) received nine awards, including prizes from the National Association for Chicana/o Studies, the American Studies Association, the Modern Language Association, and the Texas State Historical Association.

Long a supporter of Latina/o studies, he became active in the National Association for Chicana/o Studies (NACCS) as an undergraduate when he co-founded the Joto Caucus in 1993. He served as Chair of the Joto Caucus for two terms, on the Conference Organizing committee for the Texas Foco NACCS Conference, the NACCS National Coordinating Committing, and the NACCS Publications Committee. He has also long been active in the Modern Language Association, C19 the Society for Nineteenth-Century Americanists, the American Studies Association, and the Latin American Studies Association. He participated in the conversations at the 2009 and 2011 LASA conferences where the idea of a Latina/o Studies Association emerged, and was part of the original steering committee that explored the feasibility of creating a Latina/o Studies Association. He served as co-chair of the 2014 Latina/o Studies conference held in Chicago. He currently serves as co-chair of the UC Berkeley Chicana/o-Latina/o Faculty Association and chair of the MLA Latina/o Literatures and Cultures Forum.