Faculty Lecture Series - Chicano/a Studies

Led by Professor Ralph Armbruster Sandoval, examine the activist histories of UCSB Chicanx/Latinx students on campus from the late 1960s until the present. Professor Armbruster Sandoval will cover topics from the 1969 El Plan de Santa Barbara conference, the 1975 North Hall protests along with student-led movements to save UCSB’s El Centro from demolition in the mid-2010s.

Ralph Armbruster Sandoval is Professor in the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at UCSB.  He is also Faculty Director of the UCSB Community Labor Center, which conducts research on issues and topics that seek to improve the lives of working and middle-class families on the Central Coast.  Professor Armbruster Sandoval has been working on campus since 1998.  His research focuses on social movements, racial studies, urban studies, Central America, and liberation theology.  His most recent book, Starving for Justice, explores three hunger strikes that took place in the 1990s.  Chicanx/Latinx students organized these protests to demand changes ranging from establishing and strengthening Chicano Studies Departments to increasing funding to recruit and retain Chicanx/Latinx students so they could obtain their college degrees and achieve their dreams.  Professor Armbruster Sandoval is currently researching the sanctuary, anti-apartheid, and Palestinian solidarity movements in Los Angeles in the 1980s, Santa Barbara activist histories, and unionization campaigns on the Central Coast.