Rate My Professor Nora Salas

Nora Salas is an Associate Professor of History at Grand Valley State University, specializing in US Latino/Latina History within the History department. She joined the university faculty in 2014 and began her term as Director of the Kutsche Office of Local History, a Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies initiative, in August 2021. Salas holds a Ph.D. and an M.S.W. from Michigan State University, along with a B.A. from the University of Michigan. Her professional background includes substantial engagement with community organizations, which informs her dedication to enabling diverse communities to document and claim their place in West Michigan's history. As director, she continues this mission through collaborative projects that highlight underrepresented groups, building on her long-term involvement with the office.

Salas's academic research explores the intersections of political thought, class, region, and gender in shaping the Chicano Movement in Michigan. Her current project is a comparative study of Mexican and Cuban immigrants residing in Michigan before 1920, with particular attention to the racialization processes these groups experienced in smaller cities and rural areas outside Wayne County. Additional research interests include changes in ethnic Mexican migrant labor in West Michigan from the 1980s to the present. Her broader scholarly fields encompass Latino/Latina history, U.S. Women’s history, social movements, 20th-century U.S. history, agriculture, and anti-colonialism. In her teaching, Salas offers courses in U.S. History, with a strong emphasis on Women’s history and Latinx history, where she prioritizes active learning strategies and student-led research projects. Key publications include the article “Pablo’s Problem: Michigan Chicano Movement Anti-Colonialism and the Farm Bureau’s Peasant Menace, 1962-1972,” published in the Michigan Historical Review 45, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 1-38, and the chapter “We are a Distinct People: Defending Difference in Schools through the Chicano Movement in Michigan, 1966-1980,” featured in The Chicano Movement: Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century, edited by Mario T. Garcia (New York: Routledge, 2014).