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About David-James Gonzales

David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements.

David-James's website

NBN Episodes hosted by David-James:

Latino Studies February 6, 2023

Transborder Los Angeles

An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations

Yu Tokunaga

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
Focusing on Los Angeles farmland during the years between the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Japanese Internment in 1942, Transborder Los Angeles: An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations …
Latino Studies June 3, 2022

Brown Church

Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

Robert Chao Romero

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
For five hundred years, Latina/o culture and identity have been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American …
Latino Studies February 1, 2022

Unauthorized Love

Mixed-Citizenship Couples Negotiating Intimacy, Immigration, and the State

Jane Lilly López

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
For mixed-citizenship couples, getting married is the easy part. The US Supreme Court has confirmed the universal civil right to marry, guaranteeing every couple's ability to wed. But the Supreme …
Latino Studies November 10, 2021

Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas

Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect

Michelle Téllez

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
Near Tijuana, Baja California, the autonomous community of Maclovio Rojas demonstrates what is possible for urban place-based political movements. More than a community, Maclovio Rojas is a women-led social movement …
Latino Studies October 21, 2021

Sounds of Crossing

Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño

Alex E. Chávez

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke UP, 2017), Alex E. Chávez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the …
Latino Studies July 6, 2021

Boyle Heights

How a Los Angeles Neighborhood Became the Future of American Democracy

George J. Sánchez

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
The vision for America’s cross-cultural future lies beyond the multicultural myth of the "great melting pot." That idea of diversity often imagined ethnically distinct urban districts—the Little Italys, Koreatowns, and …
Latino Studies May 24, 2021

The Shadow of El Centro

A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity

Jessica Ordaz

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
Bounded by desert and mountains, El Centro, California, is isolated and difficult to reach. However, its location close to the border between San Diego and Yuma, Arizona, has made it …
Latino Studies April 27, 2021

Apostles of Change

Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio

Felipe Hinojosa

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In the late 1960s, the American city found itself in steep decline. An urban crisis fueled by federal policy wreaked destruction and displacement on poor and working-class families. The urban …
Latino Studies March 30, 2021

Unforgetting

A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas

Roberto Lovato

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s and 80s San Francisco as MS-13 and other notorious Salvadoran gangs were forming in California. In his teens, he …
Latino Studies January 20, 2021

The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista

Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878-1961

Elisa Pulido

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878-1961 (Oxford University Press, 2020) provides the first full-length biography of a celebrated Latino Mormon leader …
Latino Studies November 13, 2020

Latinx Art

Artists, Markets, and Politics

Arlene Davila

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, and Politics (Duke UP, 2020), Arlene Dávila draws on numerous interviews with artists, dealers, and curators to explore the problem of visualizing Latinx art and …
Latino Studies October 21, 2020

Once I Was You

A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America

Maria Hinojosa

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly thirty years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media—from tales of hope …
Latino Studies September 15, 2020

Ignored Racism

White Animus Toward Latinos

M. Ramirez and D. Peterson

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. Ignored Racism: White …
Latino Studies August 17, 2020

Inventing Latinos

A New Story of American Racism

Laura Gómez

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture, yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos: A …
Latino Studies July 22, 2020

Baseball as Mediated Latinidad

Race, Masculinity, Nationalism, and Performances of Identity

Jennifer Domino Rudolph

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In her incisive study Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism, and Performances of Identity (Ohio State University Press, 2020), Jennifer Domino Rudolph analyzes major league baseball’s Latin/o American players—who …
Latino Studies June 12, 2020

East of East

The Making of Greater El Monte

Romeo Guzman et al.

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
Romeo Guzman's and his colleague's East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte (Rutgers University Press, 2020) is an edited collection of thirty-one essays that trace the experience of …
General History April 30, 2020

The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America

María Cristina García

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
“Never again!” This was the rallying cry, seemingly universal and unanimous, among liberal nation-states as they formed the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and later signed the UN Declaration on …
Latino Studies April 9, 2020

Strategies of Segregation

Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality

David G. García

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
Most Americans have a limited understanding of the history of segregation in the United States. While many are taught that segregation was as an institution of social control that dominated …
Latino Studies February 11, 2020

Father Luis Olivares, A Biography

Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles

Mario T. García

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
As the leader of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles during the 1980s, Father Luis Olivares brazenly defied local Catholic authorities and the federal government by publicly offering sanctuary to …
Latino Studies August 28, 2019

The Chicana M(other)work Anthology

Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolucion

Cecilia Caballero et al.

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolucion (University of Arizona Press, 2019) editors Cecilia Caballero, Yvette Martinez-Vu, Judith Perez-Torres, Michelle Tellez, and Christine Vega, bring together …
Latino Studies November 16, 2018

Borderwall as Architecture

A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary

Ronald Rael

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
With the passage of the Secure Fence Act in 2006, the U.S. Congress authorized funding for what has become the largest domestic construction project in twenty-first century America. The result …
Latino Studies September 6, 2018

All the Agents and Saints

Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands

Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In the United States, contemporary discourse concerning “the border” almost always centers around the country’s southern boundary shared with Mexico. Rarely, in conversations public or private among Americans is there …
Latino Studies July 3, 2018

In Search of the Mexican Beverly Hills

Latino Suburbanization in Postwar Los Angeles

Jerry Gonzalez

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In Search of the Mexican Beverly Hills: Latino Suburbanization in Postwar Los Angeles (Rutgers University Press, 2018) by Professor Jerry Gonzalez challenges conventional interpretations of postwar U.S. history by focusing …
Latino Studies May 28, 2018

An American Language

The History of Spanish in the United States

Rosina Lozano

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (University of California Press, 2018), Rosina Lozano details the entangled relationship between language and notions of individual, community …