Norma E. Cantú She/Her
President of the American Folklore Society and Murchison Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Fields of expertise:
Dr. Norma E. Cantú, (’73), is the Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas-San Antonio. Her latest novel is Cabañuelas (University of New Mexico Press).
Her recent works include Transcendental Train Yard: A Collaborative Suite of Serigraphs, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, Updated Edition (UNM Press), and the co-edited anthology Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art.
Her presentations shares her journey from college student to college professor and noted the powerful and lasting change that the University here, her alma mater, had made possible. She closed with a reading of "My Mother's Hands" from her latest book of poetry, Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life and Labor (University of Arizona Press).
Cantú received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the former-Texas A&I University at Laredo and Kingsville, respectively, and her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
At the former Laredo State University, later TAMIU, she taught and served as chair and interim dean. She has also been a senior arts administrator with the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. and acting chair of the Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California-Santa Barbara.
Her teaching interests include Cultural Studies, Contemporary Literary Theory, Border Studies, Chicano/a and Latina/o Literature & Film, Folklore and Women’s Studies.
Her award-winning Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera chronicles her childhood experiences on the border. She edits the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Culture and Traditions book series at The Texas A&M University Press, is a Board member of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, and founder and director of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa.
