David G. García

Associate Professor
Department: Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
dggarcia@seis.ucla.edu
Website
Keywords: History, Immigration, Theatre

David G. García is an associate professor in School of Education and Information Studies. 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 U.S. history, and his interdisciplinary research trajectory follows 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 award winning book, Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality (University of California Press, 2018) exposes a separate and unequal school system and its purposeful links with racially restrictive housing covenants in Oxnard, California. García excavated multiple archives, and conducted and analyzed over sixty oral history interviews with Mexican Americans and African Americans who endured disparate treatment and protested discrimination. He also examined Soria v. Oxnard School Board of Trustees, one of the nation’s first desegregation cases filed jointly by Mexican American and Black plaintiffs. His research about some of the White supremacist ideologies of past education officials led sixth grade students in Oxnard to organize and successfully change the name of their middle school, and also led to the successful name change of an elementary school in Ventura. Dr. Garcia's research and commentary has been featured in news outlets including The Los Angeles Times, KPCC Public Radio, Latino USA National Public Radio, Aquí y Ahora Univision, Ventura County Star, and New Books in Latino Studies on Apple Podcasts.