Michael Trujillo
Bio
Michael L. Trujillo is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico where he holds a joint appointment in the department of American Studies and the Chicana/o Studies program. His book, The Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern New Mexico, was released in February 2010 by the University of New Mexico Press. He is co-general editor of the Contextos Book Series at UNM Press and his writings have been published in the journals Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Cultural Dynamics, and Oxford Latino Bibliographies. He earned a doctorate in Anthropology at the University of Texas in Austin. Dr. Trujillo’s book Land of Disenchantment has been reviewed in The Journal of American Folklore and The Journal of Anthropological Research.Teaching Statement
My teaching engages regional, national, and transnational notions of Latina/o and American identity and the ways those notions may be tracked through ethnographic texts and related forms of representation. In my courses, I often concentrate this critique on both textual representation and ethnographic methods. For example, I encourage students to examine methodologies such as participant observation and interviewing as well as interpretative and representational practices they may take for granted. I push graduate students and advanced undergraduates to consider post-structural critiques of common and commonsense methodologies and styles of representation. I am currently co-teaching the core graduate course for all entering American Studies graduate students and will teach this course again in the upcoming academic year. Among the courses I have taught are a total are two graduate seminars, one split graduate and undergraduate course, and four undergraduate courses. I have taught AMST 560 Cultural Studies and Folklore, AMST 560 Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, AMST 560 Borderlands Critical Regionalism, AMST 560 Borderlands Ethnography, AMST 500 Proseminar in American Studies, CCS 480 New Approaches to Chicana/o Studies, CHMS 393 Chicano Ethnography, AMST 360 Chicana/o Cultural Studies, AMST 310/510 Folklore and Expressive Culture, CHMS 201 Introduction to Chicano/Hispano/Mexicano Studies, and AMST 186 Introduction to Southwest Southwest Studies.
