Fields of Expertise:
Chicanx/Latinx history, social movement history, protest movements, migration history, US legal history
Scholarly Biography:
Rodriguez is a leading scholar in the field of Mexican American/Chicanx history. He is the author of Rethinking the Chicano Movement (2014) and The Tejano Diaspora: Mexican Americanism and Ethnic Politics in Texas and Wisconsin (2011), which won the National Association of Chicano and Chicana Studies' Texas Nonfiction Book Award. He is also the editor of Repositioning North American Migration History: New Directions in Modern Continental Migration, Citizenship, and Community (2004) and a coeditor, with Anthony Grafton, of Migration in History: Human Migration in Comparative Perspective (2007). Before joining the faculty of PSU, Rodriguez taught at Princeton University, the University of Notre Dame, and Indiana University South Bend, where he served as Director of the Civil Rights Heritage Center.
Editorial Service and Outreach Work:
At PSU, Rodriguez serves as Editor of Pacific Historical Review, a leading peer reviewed historical journal. Rodriguez has served as a past Contributing Editor at Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, and as a council member of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association and the Labor and Working Class History Association. He is also a member of the inaugural award committee which will select the John Lewis Award for History and Social Justice for the American Historical Association. In Rodriguez' time as PHR Editor he has built a strong network of international academics working in Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and the nations of South and Southeast Asia through active participation in invited workshops, international visits, and overseas conference participation to expand the reach of the PHR.
Courses taught:
- HST 297, Immigration and Film
- HST 324, US Civil Rights Movements
- HST/CHLA 325, Mexican American/Chicano History I
- HST/CHLA 326U, Mexican American/Chicano History II
- HST 434/534, U.S. Social and Intellectual History, 1865-present
- HST 446/546, Civil Rights and the Law: Equal Protection and American History
- HST/CHLA 471/HST 571, Chicanx Labor History