Monica Perales
Assistant Professor
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- Phone: (713) 743-3103
- Email: mperales3@uh.edu
- Office: 564 Agnes Arnold Hall
Monica Perales received her Ph.D. in history from Stanford University in 2004. She has been the recipient of various fellowships including the 2009 Women's Studies Faculty Summer Fellowship, and was the 2006-2007 Summerlee Fellow in Texas History at the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. She holds a B.A. 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.
Research Interests
Professor Perales is currently revising a manuscript for publication which explores the creation, evolution, demise, and collective memory 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.
Her recently published article “Fighting to Stay in Smeltertown: Lead Contamination and Environmental Justice in a Mexican American Community” (Western Historical Quarterly, Spring 2008) received the 2008 Article Award from the Oral History Association. This article examines the 1970s lead contamination case that ended in Smeltertown’s demolition, and explores how the Mexican American residents of this working class barrio mobilized to save their neighborhood from demolition in light of the discovery of widespread lead contamination.
Professor Perales is working on a co-edited volume, The Hispanic History of Texas, which contains essays by new and established scholars exploring new dimensions in the history of ethnic Mexicans in Texas. Her research continues to explore questions of race, gender, nation and identity on the border. She is presently working on projects on photography, memory and representations of Chicana/o community in the 1920s and 1930s and on Mexican motherhood on the border during the Progressive Era.
Professor Perales has presented her work at the annual scholarly meetings of several associations including the Berkshire Conference in the History of Women, The Western History Association, and the Organization of American Historians.
Selected Publications
- Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Border Community (forthcoming, University of North Carolina Press)
- Co-editor, The Hispanic History of Texas (in progress)
Articles
- “Fighting to Stay in Smeltertown: Lead Contamination and Environmental Justice in a Mexican American Community” (Western Historical Quarterly, Spring 2008)