Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning researcher, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Departments of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and Education. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education in Curriculum & Instruction.

Dr. Donna J. Nicol is presently the Chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University Dominguez Hills. She joined the faculty at CSUDH as an associate professor in 2017 and was promoted to full professor in 2021. She earned her doctorate degree in Educational Studies (with a specialization in History and Philosophy of Higher Education and a graduate minor in African American and African Studies) from The Ohio State University in 2007. Dr. Nicol was the 2021 recipient of the Faculty Excellence in Service Award at CSU Dominguez Hills.

Dr. Brittany Friedman, a sociologist, creator, and author with a PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California. She is a ’23-24 American Association of University Women faculty postdoc and an Affiliated Scholar of the American Bar Foundation.

Zara Anishanslin is Associate Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware. She is the author of the award-winning Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World and has served as a historical consultant for the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as “Hamilton: The Exhibition.”

Ulia Gosart (Popova) is a social policy analyst, who examines the impact of institutional constrains on policies concerning populations with the status of indigenous peoples, and indigenous political representation.

Gosart is a descendent of Udmurts, indigenous people of the south-eastern Siberia (Russia), and was born in the former Soviet Union.

Dr. David Sandner is a member of the HWA and SFWA. His recent work includes The Afterlife of Frankenstein (2023) in Lanternfish’s Clockwork Editions and novellas His Unburned Heart (2024) from Award-winning horror press Raw Dog Screaming as well as Mingus Fingers (2019) and Hellhounds (2022) from Fairwood Press, co-written with Jacob Weisman. Sandner is the author of The Fantastic Sublime and Critical Discoursers of the Fantastic, 1712-1831 and editor of The Treasury of the Fantastic and Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader. He is a Professor of English at California State University, Fullerton.

Marisela R. Chávez, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Prior to Cal Poly Pomona, she served as the Director of the Faculty Development Center (FDC) at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where she was also Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Dr. Chávez earned her Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. Her book Chicana Liberation: Women and Mexican American Politics in Los Angeles, 1945-1981 was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2024. Her research focuses on Chicana and women of color feminisms: Chicana history, politics, and identity; U.S. social movements; oral history and memory; and immigration.

Talk title: Chicana Liberation

This talk focuses on how activist Mexican American women in Los Angeles created a new activism and feminism by claiming their own voices and space while seeking to leverage power before the advent of and during the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Ericka Verba is Director and Professor of Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research interests include the cultural Cold War, the role of music in social movements, and the intersection of gender and class politics in Latin America. She is also an accomplished musician and was a founding member of the LA-based new song groups Sabiá and Desborde.

Talk title: Gracias a la vida / Thanks to Life

Ericka Verba will tell the story of the creation and impact of the most popular song by Chilean musician and artist Violeta Parra, an inspiration to generations of artists and activists across the globe whose music is synonymous with resistance. Gracias a la vida / Thanks to Life has been covered by artists such as Joan Baez, Mercedes Sosa, and Kacey Musgraves.

Dr. Ken Seligson is Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology at California State University Dominguez Hills in Los Angeles County. His archaeological research focuses on Ancient Maya human-environment relationships and resource management practices, as well as on ancient technology. His first book The Maya and Climate Change, which was written for a broader public audience interested in the ancient Maya, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. His current project focuses on the transition to settled life at some of the earliest ballcourt sites in Yucatan, Mexico.

Talk title: What We Can Learn from the Ancient Maya Civilization

Even though it existed over 1,000 years ago, there are still many important lessons that we can learn from the Classic Maya Civilization about adapting to environmental challenges. Cutting edge airborne laser scanning technologies are shedding new light on humungous Ancient Maya population centers and the drastic extent to which Maya society changed in the face of climate change.