Alicia Gaspar De Alba

Professor
Department: César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Department of English
agdealba@ucla.edu
Website
Keywords: Mexico

Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba is a celebrated writer and scholar. A founding faculty member and former chair of the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies (2007-2010), her work explores gender and sexuality, Chicana/o art, popular culture, and border studies. Known to her students as La Profe, she teaches courses on border consciousness, bilingual creative writing, Chicana lesbian literature, and barrio popular culture.

With novels that have been translated into Spanish, German and Italian, Gaspar de Alba has published numerous books, articles, short stories, and poetry. Her 2011 book, Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s “Irreverent Apparition,” co-edited with Alma López herself, serves as a Chicana feminist response to the religious opposition against Lopez’s digital collage, “Our Lady,” and offers diverse perspectives on art, censorship, first-amendment rights, the alignment of Church and State, and Chicano nationalism.  Her 2010 anthology (co-edited with her graduate student, Georgina Guzmán) Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera and her 2005 mystery novel, Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders examine the unresolved murders of over five hundred Mexican women and girls that have taken place on the border between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico since 1993.