Vanessa fonseca-chávez

Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez

Chair Elect

Dr. Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez (she/her/ella) is an Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean of Inclusion and Student Success at Arizona State University. She serves as the inaugural co-director of the ASU Latinx Oral History Lab and the co-director of the Following the Manito Trail project. She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of New Mexico and her Ph.D. from Arizona State University. Her research focuses on Chicanx literature and culture, colonialism and its legacies, Chicana feminisms and more recently on how rural Latinx communities understand and narrate a sense of place. She is the author of Colonial Legacies in Chicana/o Literature: Looking through the Kaleidoscope (2020) and the co-author of three books, including La Plonqui: The Literary Life and Work of Margarita Cota-Cárdenas (2023). Vanessa and her colleague, Yvette J. Saavedra are co-editors of the book series, BorderVisions, with the University of Arizona Press. The series aims to publish scholarly monographs and edited collections that are pushing the boundaries of inquiry related to the U.S. Mexico borderlands.