Position Title
Assistant Professor, American Studies
José Manuel Santillana Blanco is a scholar, community organizer and storyteller. As a son of Mexican immigrant parents, José Manuel was politicized within the rural migrant farmworker landscapes of central California. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at UC Davis.
Drawing on the work of Black, Latinx and Indigenous decolonial thinkers, his work explores the ways Black, Immigrant and Indigenous women-led community struggles across the United States have been foundational to our understanding of racialized social life, ecological violence and resistance across entangled geographies. His book manuscript Radical Motherhood Ecologies examines the intricate role local environmental histories play in shaping ecologies across varying geographies, especially in relation to the ways in which motherhood becomes salient as a mobilizing force to address and disrupt structural violence in their communities.