Monica Perales
Assistant Professor (United States, Mexican-American)
564 Agnes Arnold Hall
(713)743-3103
mperales3@uh.edu

Monica Perales received her Ph.D. in history from Stanford University in 2003. She has been the recipient of various fellowships including a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, and before coming to UH was a graduate fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. She holds a BA in Journalism (1994) and M.A. in History (1996) from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Teaching:
Professor Perales’ general teaching interests include Chicana/o labor and social history, immigration, American West, Borderlands and oral history. She currently teaches in the Scholars Community Program, and is teaching and developing graduate and undergraduate courses in Chicana history, The US/Mexico border in history and memory, comparative Latina/o history, and race and labor in the West. Dr. Perales’ work also contemplates issues of environmental justice, and the relationship between ethnic communities, industrial corporations, and emerging environmental policy in the West

Research:
Perales is currently working on a manuscript for publication which explores the creation, evolution and demise of Smeltertown, the predominantly ethnic Mexican company town for the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) copper smelter located in El Paso, Texas. Placed within the larger context of the urbanization and industrialization of the US Southwest and the rise of ASARCO’s transnational copper empire, this project examines the intersections of ethnic, labor, Borderlands, western and environmental history. Additionally, she is working on a project on photography, memory and representations of Chicana/o community in the 1920s and 1930s.

Selected Publications:
Professor Perales has given many conference presentations and is working on a book manuscript entitled “Smeltertown: A Biography of a Mexican American Community, 1880-1972.”

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