Norma Elia Cantú

Norma Elia Cantú served as the President of the American Folklore Society and is the Murchison Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where she teaches Latinx and Chicanx Studies. A daughter of the borderlands, she focuses on the US-Mexico border for her research and scholarly work as well as her poetry, fiction and personal essays. She has coedited over 10 books on a number of subjects including art (Moctezuma’s Table: Rolando Briseño’s Chicano Tablescapes and Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson’s Art of Dissidence and Dreams), in STEM (Paths to Discovery: Autobiographies of Chicanas with Careers in Mathematics, Science, and Engineering), Texas Studies (Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art), and in Folklore (Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change and Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos). She has received awards for her work from the Modern Languages Association, the American Folklore Society, the Tejas Foco of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, and The University of California, Santa Barbara. She received the Galardón Luis Leal from the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares in Spain. She co-founded CantoMundo and is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop; she currently serves on the board of the latter and of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. Her research and creative writing have earned her an international reputation, and she is a frequent keynote and plenary invited speaker. She has read her work in Europe, Asia, and throughout the US and Mexico. The award-winning Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, is taught in numerous universities in the US and in Europe. She translated Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/la Frontera into Spanish. She most recently published the co-edited anthologies meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction and Teaching Gloria E. Anzaldúa: Pedagogies and Practices for our Classrooms and Communities, Cabañuelas, a novel, and Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor. 

ncantu@trinity.edu