Compton in My Soul- A Journey in Search of Racial Equality
Featuring: Albert M. Camarillo
Professor of American History, the Leon Sloss Jr. Memorial Professor, and Haas Centennial Professor of Public Service, Emeritus, Stanford University
May 16, 2024
12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
SBSG 151
This UCI Illuminations event centers on Albert M. Camarillo’s life journey from Compton, California to a diversity of academic and leadership pathways, roles, and spaces.
It will provide an opportunity to learn more about the formative experiences and moments underpinning Camarillo’s forthcoming memoir, Compton in My Soul - A Life in Pursuit of Racial Equality, which will be published by Stanford University Press in July 2024.
An accomplished and impactful U.S. historian, academic administrator, and educator, his event presentation is a wonderful opportunity to consider how memoir writing makes it accessible to unpack and discuss generatively meaningful moments in one’s life goals and journey.
Albert M. Camarillo is the past president of the Organization of American Historians, the nation’s largest membership association for historians of the United States, and past president of the American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch.
A member of the Stanford University History Department for over forty years, Camarillo is widely regarded as one of the founding scholars of the field of Mexican American history and Chicano Studies. He was born and raised in Compton where he attended public schools before entering the University of California at Los Angeles. He received his BA in History in 1970 and his Ph.D. in U.S. History in 1975. His dissertation was nominated that year as one of the best Ph.D. theses in the nation in American history.
Camarillo has published seven books and dozens of articles and essays dealing with the experiences of Mexican Americans and other communities of color in American cities. Two of his books, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios (seven printings) and Chicanos in California: A History of Mexican Americans (four printings) have been widely read.
Event Organizer: Ana Elizabeth Rosas, Associate Professor, Departments of Chicano-Latino Studies and History, arosas1@uci.edu