Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: Consumer activism and boycotts, 20th century social movements, labor history, Chicanx and Latinx history

About Me: My research focuses on consumer culture and coalition-backed activism in the late 20th century United States. In particular, I am interested in movements rooted in the American West, which have brought together labor, Chicana and Latinx, queer, feminist, and Black activists and organizations. My first book, Brewing a Boycott, details a decades-long movement that did just this — in service of a multi-decade boycott on Coors beer. Targeting the company for allegations of anti-unionism, discrimination, and far-right politics, activists and boycotters built a vibrant and lasting consumer movement (1950s-1990s). My current research examines radical activism in support of (and in coalition with) people experiencing homelessness in the 1980s and 1990s.

I currently live in Los Angeles and work at the University of La Verne, where I teach courses in US history, Latinx history, social movements, and historical methodology. I also serve as the Director of Honors and Interdisciplinary Initiatives. I received my Ph.D. from Yale University in 2016 and B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 2009.

Recent Publications: Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors & Remade American Consumer Activism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, May 2021.

“The Goya boycott is something much more than cancel culture,” The Washington Post, July 16, 2020.

“‘Hardhats May Be Misunderstood’: The Boycott of Coors Beer and the Making of Gay-Labor-Chicana/o Alliances,” Pacific Historical Review 89, no. 2 (May 2020): 264-296.

“‘Shouldn’t You Be Boycotting Coors?’: Ephemera, Boycotting Counterpublics, & The Campaign Against Coors Beer,” Radical History Review, no. 134 (May 2019): 142-167.

“‘Mexico, At Our Very Door’: Prohibition-Era Brewing in the US-Mexico Borderlands,” Journal of the West 55, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 21-28.