Rate My Professor Nora Salas

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).