Carlos Parra

Carlos Francisco Parra is an Assistant Professor in the University of Arizona History Department and a U of A Wildcat alumnus. Dr. Parra’s published research covers topics ranging from the origins of the first U.S.-Mexican border fences in Southern Arizona, the cultural assimilation of ethnic Mexican students in the early New Mexico public school system, and the cultural history of Spanish-language television in greater Latino Los Angeles. Utilizing archival research at multimedia film and television collections as well as oral history interviews, Parra is currently writing a book manuscript on how Southern California Spanish TV stations promoted a bicultural Latino identity empowering migrant and U.S.-born Latinos in reaching the American Dream.

 

Parra completed his Ph.D. in History at the University of Southern California in 2021 and has participated in several prestigious fellowships, including appointments with the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Latino Center. During 2023-2024, Parra curated a multimedia public history initiative on behalf of the Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools titled “Beyond Fronteras: Treasuring an Arizona Border Community’s Past and Future.” Through a state-level Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grant funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021, Parra curated the development of a bilingual museum exhibition at the Historic 1904 County Courthouse in Nogales and its companion online educational resource (BeyondFronteras.org). In his public history work for Beyond Fronteras, Parra coordinated educators, artists, community members, and U of A undergraduate students in creating local history research articles and high school lesson plans. Parra also worked with local high school youth and teachers in developing poetry and artwork for the Beyond Fronteras exhibition as well as a community history mural at the Nogales Public Library.

 

Previously Parra served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University and was an inaugural member of the UA Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

 

Publications:

 

Parra, Carlos. “‘Dangerous in the Minds of Barrio People’: Creating Bicultural Latino Identity on Spanish-Language Television in Los Angeles, 1960-1990.” Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 54, no. 1 (Winter 2023), 287-306.