I grew up between Colorado and California, and spent much of my teen and early adult years in west coast countercultures. I did a lot of experimenting with the University of California, starting at Berkeley, but finally settled in to Wellesley College in 1984.

As a Women’s Studies major at Wellesley, I pursued critical alongside creative projects, working with faculty across disciplines – including history, Latin American Studies, creative writing, and English. I entered the American Studies PhD program at Brown University in 1988, during the years poststructural thought was transforming the philosophy and practice of history. American Studies at Brown in that period leaned strongly toward training its grad students in U.S. women’s history and historiography, emphasizing histories of race and culture, and hosting The Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Nearby at Yale, a cohort of senior and junior scholars was building what became the New Western History. As someone with a sense that questions of “where” or geography condition our theory and activisms, I gravitated toward the New Western History as a project in public scholarship — it spurred my own work in cultural and literary studies of the US West.

I was eager to return from the northeast to points relatively more south and west, and when my husband was offered a job in Chicano/a literary studies at Rice University in Houston, his home town, I accompanied him with our baby son.  In 1997, I joined the Rice faculty.   That same year we had a second son.  We have been surrounded by a beautiful extended family in Houston for all the years since.  They have attended not only soccer games but also Chicano Studies events hosted at Rice and more recently, college graduations!  Both sons are Rice alums, proud to call themselves members of Baker College (classes of ’18 and ’21).

As an interdisciplinary researcher, I work between the English Department and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.  I am a founding member of the Amerícas Research Center and chair of its Local/Global Wests research cluster. As someone who teachesAsian American Literary and Cultural Studies classes, I am an affiliate of the Chao Center for Asian Studies.  My courses in feminism and environmental justice literatures count toward the Environmental Studies minor program.

In 2014, I co-founded a Public Humanities educational project, The Institute for Women Surfers — the initiative emerged out of popular activist response to long term research I’ve done about surfers.  The Institute is an ongoing project, offering training in grassroots political education for activists and publicizing the creative and activist work of its participants.  It has done trainings in California, Europe (Wales), and Oceania (Australia).

Invited lectures over the last several years have addressed topics of interest to both scholarly and public audiences.  Some of the scholarly venues include:  Stanford University, where I was an affiliated visiting scholar for 2017-2019; Monash University in Frankston Australia; Cardiff University in Wales; the University of Bath, England; the University of Waikato in Raglan, Aotearoa/New Zealand; the University of Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; the University of Western Australia, Perth; the Huntington/USC Institute on California and the West, at the Huntington Library; the University of New Mexico. Presentations for the public have included:  the legendary Bird’s Surf Shack in San Diego, the Australian National Surfing Museum, Torquay, Victoria; San Onofre Parks Foundation;  Santa Monica Conservancy, Heal the Bay, and Black Surfers Collective; Global Wave Conference; California Green Summit; Rally: A Public Space for Social Entrepreneurship in San Francisco; Patagonia in San Francisco on the International Day of the Girl; Texas Democrat Women;  Advanced Placement (AP) training for teachers in the Rice University Center for College Readiness.

As an administrator, I have served for two terms as a Rice University College Magister: first at Baker College (2004-2011) and more recently at Brown College (2013-2018).  With José Aranda and the Baker College leadership, especially Megan McSpedon, we served as inaugural Magisters at Duncan College, laying down a special cooperative bond that continues between Duncan and Baker Colleges.

My major research service commitments have been to the Western Literature Association (WLA).  I was elected President of the WLA in 2003, hosting the annual conference in Houston. I have served on WLA’s prize committees and sit on the editorial board of Western American Literature.  In 2018 I began a new term of service as an elected member of the WLA Executive Committee.  I am at work with Ashley Reis (UNT) now on an intergenerational initiative related to #MeToo and the WLA.