Verenize Arceo

Biography

My research interests center on the intersections of race, space, and belonging in education for Mexican American women in the twentieth and twenty-first century. My research will analyze the early history of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chicanx & Latinx Studies program, alongside the lived realities of the Mexican American women who chose to embark on their educational careers at UW-Madison. Seeking to build off of oral accounts, newspapers, correspondences, and department records, I will question how and why these women continued to carve out a place for themselves in education, despite the university serving as a social border landscape—harboring both elements of inclusion and exclusion. Moreover, I interrogate how these women have found a sense of belonging when pulled between two worlds: their current physical ties to the U.S. and their ancestral connections to their home country.

Education

M.A., History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2021
B.A., History, University of California, Merced, 2018

Field

• U.S./North American History

MA Title

• “What Are We Doing Here?: The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chicano Studies Program and the Landscape of (un)Belonging, 1974-76”

Selected Publications

• “Bridging China with Merced: Chinese Economic and Spatial Development, 1870-1900.” Southern California Quarterly. (Submitted)

Selected Awards

• Early Excellence in Teaching Award, 2021. (Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Courses Taught as TA

• History 136: Sports, Recreation, and Society in the United States. (Professor Alex Mountain)
• History/Asian American Studies 160: Process of Movement and Dislocation. (Professor Cindy I-Fen Cheng)