About Dr. Gonzalez

Dr. Deena J. González is interested in the social histories of invisible figures and in the creation of a sub-field of Chicano/a/x Studies, that is, Chicana history. One of many second-generation feminist scholars, she tackled the difficult work of archival exploration,  telling stories through the eyes of a Chicana lived experience and of racial and cultural past embodied by Spanish-Mexican-Native women in her home state of New Mexico. Her life’s work and passion has contributed to understandings by students of sexuality, class, race, and gender in the four decades that span her academic career at Pomona College (1983 – 2001), Loyola Marymount University (Chair, 2001 - 2011; Associate Provost, 2011-2018), and Gonzaga University (Provost, 2019 -2021; Sr. University Fellow and Professor of History, 2022-2024). Her administrative career has provided opportunities to recruit and retain faculty of color, to shape higher educational policies that bend toward social justice concerns, and to lead by empowering others. Retiring this summer, 2024, to New Mexico, she plans to complete a book about a defiant young woman whose life she examined recently as Davis lecturer at Gonzaga University, and to spend time with her sister renovating the 1935 family farmhouse built by her paternal grandfather and local architects. She is grateful for the opportunity to share the story of their part of the world in works published in the US, Spain, and Mexico. That the field of Chicana and Chicano Studies endures and grows is a reward for the scholarly efforts of so many.