David G. García
David G. García
Associate Professor
Email: davidgg@ucla.edu
Office: 1041D Moore Hall
Phone: (310) 206-5434
Biography
David G. García, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Education and History at UCLA
He is one of only a handful of historians across the country documenting Chicana/o community histories of education. He earned his Ph.D. in United States history from UCLA while developing an interdisciplinary research trajectory following three main lines of inquiry: (1) Chicana/o teatro (theater) as public revisionist history, (2) the pedagogy of Hollywood’s urban school genre, and (3) Chicana/o educational histories. Each of these areas addresses the interconnectivity of history and education in relation to Chicana/o, Latina/o communities in the United States and examines how the constructs of race, culture, and class shape educational experiences for Communities of Color across time and place.
His book, Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence and The Struggle for Educational Equality (UC Press 2018), unearths the ideological and structural architecture of enduring racial inequality within and beyond schools in Oxnard, California. Based on extensive archival research, the narrative spans 1903 to 1974, exposing a separate and unequal school system and its purposeful links with racially restrictive housing covenants. He conducted and analyzed over sixty oral history interviews with Mexican Americans and African Americans who endured disparate treatment and protested discrimination. The book’s final chapter focuses on one of the nation’s first desegregation cases filed jointly by Mexican American and Black plaintiffs.
Strategies of Segregation has received book awards (noted below) and excellent reviews featured in journals including the American Historical Review, Pacific Historical Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies Review, History of Education Quarterly, and Southern California Quarterly.
His interdisciplinary research has also chronicled the evolution of the Chicano-Latino performance group Culture Clash, demonstrating the ways their theater functions as a form of public revisionist history.
Dr. García’s co-authored research and second book project (in progress) examines Hollywood film representations of Latina/Latino and Black high school students since 1954.
Graduate Courses:
(Education 200D offered winter quarter) Applying History Methods to Educational Research. The focus of this course requires students to locate and examine primary documents that supplement their existing research interest.
(Education 288, Discussion 29) Research Apprenticeship Course is a space for students who are primarily interested in applying a historical lens to their research.
Undergraduate:
(Education M102) Mexican Americans and the Schools. This course presents a historical survey of Chicana and Chicano schooling in the United States.
Publications
Book
García, D.G. Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and The Struggle for Educational Equality Berkeley: University of California Press, American Crossroads Series, no. 47, January 2018. https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520296879
Refereed Articles: Published
Barragán Goetz, P.M., Donato, R., García, D.G., Guzman, G., Hanson, J., & Santiago, M. “Mexican American Educational History: A Moment of Recognition,” Teachers College Record, vol. 125 no. 10, (2023), 144-153. (Authors listed alphabetically) https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681231216526
García, D.G., T.J. Yosso, & Santos, R.E. In Pursuit of “Equality of Opportunity”: Ernesto and Karla Galarza Challenge School Segregation, Washington D.C., 1947. Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 41 no. 3, (2022), 37-64. https://doi.org/10.5406/19364695.41.3.02
T.J. Yosso & García, D.G. Carving Out a Legal Narrative from Galarza to Soria: Accounting for the Complexities of History, Race, and Place in Educational Research, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, vol. 36 no. 1, (2023), 9-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1930267
García, D.G., & T.J. Yosso. Recovering Our Past: A Methodological Reflection. History of Education Quarterly, 60.1 (2020): 59-72. https://doi.org/10.1017/heq.2019.50
García, D.G., & T.J. Yosso. “Strictly in the Capacity of Servant”: The Interconnection Between Residential and School Segregation in Oxnard, California, 1934-1954. History of Education Quarterly, 53.1 (2013): 64-89. https://doi.org/10.1111/hoeq.12003 [2014 History of Education Society Prize Committee Honorable Mention.]
García, D.G., T.J. Yosso, & F.P. Barajas. “A Few of the Brightest, Cleanest Mexican Children”: School Segregation as a Form of Mundane Racism in Oxnard, California, 1900-1940. Harvard Educational Review 82.1 (2012): 1-25. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.82.1.40328h635h7745r3
García, D.G. Transformations through Teatro: Culture Clash in a Chicana/o History Classroom. Radical History Review 102 (2008): 111-130. Special issue on History and Critical Pedagogies: Transforming Consciousness, Classrooms, and Communities. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2008-017
Yosso, T.J. & D.G. García. “Cause It’s Not Just Me”: Walkout’s History Lessons Challenge Hollywood’s Urban School Formula. Radical History Review 102 (2008): 171-184. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2008-022
García, D.G. Culture Clash Invades Miami: Oral Histories & Ethnography Center Stage. Qualitative Inquiry 14.6 (2008): 865-895. Special issue on “Autoethnography, Critical Race Theory, and Performance.” https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800408318305
Yosso, T.J. & D.G. García. “This Is No Slum!”: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of Community Cultural Wealth in Culture Clash’s Chavez Ravine. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32.1 (2007): 145-179. https://doi.org/10.1525/azt.2007.32.1.145
García, D.G. Remembering Chavez Ravine: Culture Clash and Critical Race Theater. Chicana/o-Latina/o Law Review UCLA School of Law 26 (2006): 111-130. https://doi.org/10.5070/C7261021168
Refereed Chapters: Published
Yosso, T.J. & D.G. García. From Ms. J. to Ms. G.: Analyzing Racial Microaggressions in Hollywood’s Urban School Genre. In, eds. B. Frymer, T. Kashani, A.J. Nocella II, & R. Van Heertum, Hollywood’s Exploited: Public Pedagogy, Corporate Movies, and Cultural Crisis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 85-103.
Yosso, T.J. & D.G. García. “Who are These Kids, Rejects from Hell?”: Analyzing Hollywood Distortions of Latina/o High School Students. In, eds. E.G. Murillo, Jr., S.A. Villenas, R.Trinidad Galván, J. Sánchez Muñoz, C. Martínez, & M. Machado-Casas, Handbook of Latinos and Education: Theory, Research, and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2010), 450-473.
Reprints: Published
Yosso, T.J. & D.G. García. “Who are These Kids, Rejects from Hell?”: Analyzing Hollywood Distortions of Latina/o High School Students.” In, eds. E.G. Murillo, Jr., Delgado Bernal, D., Morales, S. Urrieta, L. Jr., Ruiz Bybee, E., Sánchez Muñoz, J., Saenz, V., Villanueva, D., Machado-Casas, M., & Espinoza, K., Handbook of Latinos and Education: Theory, Research, and Practice (2nd Edition). (New York: Routledge, 2022), 309-332.
Yosso, T.J. & D.G. García. “This is No Slum!”: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of Community Cultural Wealth in Culture Clash’s Chavez Ravine. In, eds. D.G. Solórzano & López Mares-Tamayo, M.J., The Chicana/o Education Pipeline: History, Institutional Critique, and Resistance. Aztlán Anthology Series, no. 5. (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2018), 79-112.
Refereed Encyclopedia Entry: Published
García, D.G. Culture Clash. In, ed. C.M. Tatum, Encyclopedia of Latino Culture: From Calaveras to Quinceañeras. (Oxford, England: Greenwood, 2014), 1206-1211.
Review Essay: Published Online
García, D.G. & A.I. Flores. Remember Chavez Ravine! A Los Angeles Story, a review of Chavez Ravine for HowlRound: A Center for the Theater Commons, May 5, 2015, http://howlround.com/remember-chavez-ravine-a-los-angeles-story
Creative Works: Unpublished
Salinas, R., & D.G. García. “Before Mexicans Made the Bricks for Royce Hall”: Reginaldo Francisco del Valle, UCLA’s Chicano Founding Father. Comedic Monologue. Premiere performance, June 2019.
Awards & Grants
Awards and Grants
Dr. García is honored that the impact of his research was most recently recognized with a 2024 Henry T. Trueba Award for Research Leading to the Transformation of the Social Contexts of Education. His work has also received the following honors:
- 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award
- 2019 American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Book Award
- 2019 American Educational Research Association Division F New Scholars Book Award Honorable Mention
- 2014-15 Nomination, UCLA Department of Education Distinguished Teaching Award for Outstanding Dedication in Teaching and Mentoring
- 2013-14 UCLA Hellman Fellowship
- 2013-14 Ford Foundation, National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for Achieving Excellence in College and University Teaching
- 2013-14 UCLA Institute of American Cultures, Chicano Studies Research Center, Research Grant Award
- 2013-14 UCLA Office for Diversity & Faculty Development, Research Grant Award
- 2008-10 University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship
