Collegiate Affiliation
Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies
Links
Association for Jotería Arts, Activism & Scholarship (AJAAS)

José Manuel Santillana Blanco is a Queer Xicanx Feminist activist, scholar and storyteller. As son Mexican immigrant parents, José Manuel was politicized within the rural migrant farmworker landscapes of central California. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Minnesota.

Drawing on the ideas of Black, Brown and Indigenous decolonial thinkers, his work explores the ways women-led community struggles across the United States have been foundational to our understanding of racialized social life, ecological violence and resistance across entangled geographies. His dissertation titled Racial Motherhood Ecologies examines the manner in which Black, Brown and Indigenous activist mothers in the Southwest Borderlands have fought against racialized ecological violence for over three decades.

José Manuel’s work has been published in Aztlán: A Journal for Chicano Studies, University of Nebraska Press and Routledge. He is the recipient of the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Interdisciplinary Dissertation Fellowship with the ICGC and University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. As an educator, Jose Manuel is committed to consistently rethinking new ways to foster a class culture centered on critical thinking, radical vulnerability, healing and collectivity.

Educational Background & Specialties
Open Close

Educational Background

  • B.A.: Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2007 -
  • M.A.: Chicana and Chicano Studies, California State University, Northridge, 2011 -
  • M.A.: Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota, 2018 -

Specialties

  • Chicana/Latina and Women of Color Feminisms
  • Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
  • Critical Indigenous Studies
  • Environmental Justice Studies
  • Jotería Studies
  • Chicanx and Latinx Studies