User:Denmgarcia/Maria Cotera

Maria Cotera
Maria Eugenia Cotera (born July 17, 1964) is an American author, researcher, and professor. Maria Cotera is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas. She started as a researcher and writer at the Chicana Research and Learning Center. In 1989 she helped produce "Crystal City: A Twenty Year Reflection," a documentary about young women in the 1969 Chicano student walkout in Crystal City, Texas.

Early Life
Maria Cotera was born in Austin, Texas on July 17, 1964 to Chicana activist Martha P. Cotera (born 1938) and United Stated Air Force veteran and urban renewal architect student Juan Cotera. Juan and Martha Cotera married in 1963 and was one of equals. Martha's mother initially felt guilty after having Maria for bringing in a child, especially a daughter into the world given its current state; this inspired her to make a difference in society.

Maria had a brother, Juan Javier who passed away at the age of 25.

Cotera's mother, Martha P. Cotera is a Mexican-born American activist and was one of the pioneers of the Latin American feminist movement in the United States. First known for her grassroots activism, she worked to strengthen bilingual education programs and helped found Austin's Texas's Chicana Research and Learning Center. She was one of six women featured in the Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana documentary which is about the experience of who participated in the 1977 National Women's Conference. Maria was a good student at a young age, as she learned English quickly and skipped two grades. She has been a strong believer in feminism and equal rights, and has taught her daughter to believe in it as well. She is a longtime advocate for women's rights and has helped transform the gendered politics of the Chicano movement.

“Diosa y Hembra: The History and Heritage of Chicanas in the U.S.” (1976)

Cotera's father did his undergraduate studies at Texas Western College, his Bachelor of Architecture degree and his Graduate Studies in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Texas. In 2003 he helped found COTERA+REED ARCHITECTS with Philip Reed. [TT1]Can you find anything online about her upbringing in Crystal City? A few sentences might be helpful to understand why she produced the Crystal City documentary. She was the author of “Diosa y Hembra: The History and Heritage of Chicanas in the U.S.” (1976)

Education
B.A. Plan II Honors Program, University of Texas at Austin (1986)

Certificate of Culture and Language, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1988)

M.A. Department of English, University of Texas at Austin (1994)

Ph.D., Program in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University (2001)

Training and Early Years
As a Master's students at the University of Texas, Cotera worked with Dr. Jose Limon on a recovery project that uncovered several lost manuscripts by Jovita Gonzalez Mireles. One of which was Caballero, a co-authored novel written in 1938 that explored the politics of gender and race in the borderlands. This inspired her to think about other women of color who were working in the fields of ethnography and folklore in the 1930s and 1940s.

Native Speakers: Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Jovita Gonzalez, and the Poetics of Culture (2008)
Cotera's first book, Native Speakers: Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Jovita Gonzalez and the Poetics of Culture, received the Gloria Anzaldua book prize for 2009 from the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA). This prize is awarded for "groundbreaking scholarship in women's studies that makes significant contributions to women of color/transnational scholarship."

Public Humanities & Digital Humanities
Dr. Cotera is working on the Chicana por mi Raza Digital memory Project, an online interactive oral histories and material culture documenting Chicana Feminists praxis from 1965-1985. She has been working on this project with co-director Linda Garcia Merchant since 2009. This project involves the digitization of oral histories and documents-photographs, posters, correspondence, written material (published and unpublished), ephemera-and the development of a flexible interface that allows users to access these materials for educational and scholarly uses. Currently the project has over 100 oral histories and 5,000 archival documents making it one of the largest repositories of Chicana feminism in the world. The Chicana por mi Raza project has received national attention for the plethora of resources that it offers on Chicana feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, but also for its potential to transform scholarly production and teaching in the "post-print" age. It is one of the few major digital humanities research initiatives that focuses on women of color.

She is the lead curator for two public history exhibits: Las Rebeldes: Stories of Strength and Struggle in southeast Michigan and Chicana Fotos: Nancy DeLos Santos.

Dr. Cotera has been working on a community-based project named El Museo del Norte in collaboration with Detroit Latinx arts and culture advocates. The goal of this project is to document the history of the Latinx community in the midwest and to build a museum and cultural center focused on community stories. Cotera has lead conversation around community expectations and desires regarding the purpose, goals, and responsibilities of a Latinx museum in Southwest Detroit, and curated and designed a series of innovative "pop-up museums" that utilize oral history and local archives to tell the stories of Latinos in Michigan since 2009.

Her edited volume (with Dionne Espinoza and Maylei Blackwell), Chicana Movidas: New Narratives of Feminism and Activism in the Movement has been adopted in courses nationwide.

Cotera has served on the National Women's Studies Association (2007-2010), the program committee for the National Women's Studies Association (2017-2018), and the Arte Publico Recovery Project Governing Board (2018 - Present).

Honors and Awards
1996 Galarza Prize for Excellence, (Best Graduate Research Paper), Center for Chicana/o Research, Stanford University

1998 Graduate Service Award, Dean of Students, Stanford University

1999 Fredrick Cervantes Student Premio (Best Graduate Paper), National Association of Chicano/Chicana Studies, XXVI Annual Conference.

1999 James W. Lyons Award for Service to the Stanford Community, Dean of Students, Stanford University

2003 Latino Faculty/Staff Recognition Award for Service to the Latino Community

2005 Michigan Campus Compact Faculty/Staff Community Service-Learning Award

2006 Latino Faculty/Staff Recognition Award for Service to the Latino Community, Latina/o Task Force, University of Michigan

2007 Earl Lewis Scholar, In Recognition of Outstanding Service to Graduate Students of Color at the University of Michigan, Students of Color at Rackham (SCOR)

2007 "Circle Award," in recognition of Outstanding Service to the University Community, La Celebracion Latina/o Committee

2008 Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of Michigan

2018 Millie Tirado LUCHA Award, honoring faculty who have made a significant difference in the lives of Latinx faculty, students and staff, La casa, University of Michigan.

Fellowships
1993 Program Development Fellowship, Graduate Opportunity Program, University of Texas

1995 Summer Research Fellowship, Program in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University

1997 Escobedo Summer Research Fellowship, Center for Chicana/o Research, Stanford University

2000 Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, University of Michigan

2000 Beatrice Bain Research Group Visiting Scholar Program, U.C. Berkeley

2000 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship

2000 Dissertation Research Fellowship, Graduate Research Opportunity Award School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University

2000 Program Development Fellowship, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicities (CSRE), Stanford University

2003 Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship

2005 Mellon Summer Fellow, Future of Minority Studies Research Project Summer Seminar: "Feminist Identities, Global Struggles," Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

2008 Fellow, Colloquium on the Science of Learning (Multicultural Teaching), Center for Research on Teaching and Learning, University of Michigan

2013 Fellow, Workshop on Diversity in the Classroom, Center for Research on Teaching and Learning, University of Michigan

2014 Helmut Stern Fellow, Institute for Humanities

2018 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Research Fellowship