Dr. Nichole Margarita Garcia’s groundbreaking research has largely been inspired by other feminist scholars of color like bell hooks and Gloria Anzaldua.
“Those foundational women of color feminists from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s paved the way so that we can do this work,” says Garcia, an assistant professor of higher education at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. “I’ve always considered myself a Chicana Latina feminist, and it’s in my work.”
Garcia has found a way to do what so many scholars find difficult: to combine the personal with the theoretical, bringing her lived experiences to her scholarship, and, in doing so, inspiring a generation of younger scholars to do the same.
Her popular blog in Diverse has covered a wide range of topics including the challenges women of color like her face in the academy, such as being told that she doesn’t look like a professor. She insists that students call her “Dr. Garcia.”
“I make sure that I contextualize why I go by ‘Dr. Garcia’ and the historical implications of what that means,” says Garcia, who grew up in Salt Lake City and attended the University of Utah, where she carved out an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree in education with a concentration in Gendered Ethnic Studies.
“I met my first Chicana Ph.D. when I was 13,” Garcia remembers. Dr. Delores Delgado Bernal, currently a faculty member at California State University, Los Angeles, was on the faculty at the University of Utah at the time when Garcia was a student there. She had agreed to mentor her starting in high school and remains a guiding light to this day.
After graduating from the University of Utah, Garcia earned a master’s degree in Chicana and Chicano studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara and then a Ph.D. — completed in four years — at the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA] where she wrote her dissertation, “Adelante y Pa’lante: College-Educated Chicana/o and Puerto Rican Family,” under the supervision of Dr. Daniel G. Solórzano.
