Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González is Professor in the MAS department at the University of Arizona. Until fall 2004 she was Professor of Chicano Studies and German Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She studied at four German universities and was among the first women of color to receive a doctorate degree from Stanford University. As an undergraduate she attended the University of Arizona and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She is a native of the Arizona/Sonora desert and is rooted in the Yaqui-Mexican culture.
The many firsts in Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González’s career have helped blaze trails for women, both academically and in the women’s rights arena. She was the first indigenous woman to receive a doctorate in German Studies and later became the first woman of color to be tenured at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1985). In 1991 she became the first native Chicana woman to chair an academic department within the University of California system and was among the first native women in the nation to be promoted to full professor at a major research university. Under her leadership the very first proposal for the Chicano/a Studies doctorate degree in the nation was created.
In 1996 Dr. Broyles-González was honored with the lifetime Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Association for Chicana & Chicano Studies. The award recognizes Professor Broyles-González’s “multiple and invaluable scholarly contributions and her advocacy for the Chicana/o Studies discipline.” Other distinguished national and international awards have come from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the German Academic Exchange Service, which funded her research in Germany for five years.
The focal points of her research and teaching are popular culture, gender, oral tradition, Native American culture, and the popular performance genres of the US-Mexico borderlands, of which she is a native. Among her most recent publications is the first academic study of the legendary singer and National Medal of Arts recipient Lydia Mendoza, entitled Lydia Mendoza’s Life in Music/La Historia de Lydia Mendoza. Norteño Tejano legacies (published by Oxford University Press, bilingually and with a CD, 2001). Broyles-González also recently published a comprehensive raza women’s anthology entitled Re-emerging Native Women of the Americas. Native Chicana Latina Women’s Studies (Kendall Hunt Publishers, 2001).
Broyles-González has made many contributions to the field of performance studies. Her landmark book El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement (University of Texas Press), helped lay the foundation for the study of women and performance and it has become required reading at many universities across the country. It is the only book-length study of a Chicana/o performance ensemble. More recently she has written on performance artist María Elena Gaitán and on women musicians of the US-Mexico borderlands.
In 1996 Professor Broyles-González made national news by legally challenging the unequal payment of women and minority professors within the University of California system. In 1998 President Clinton honored her at a White House ceremony marking women’s struggles for equal pay.
Broyles-González first book, The German Response to Latin American Literature, was published in Germany. During her ten years of research/study in Germany, Professor Broyles-González also pioneered in bringing Chicano/a literature (and an interest in Chicana/o Studies) to a European readership. She was the first to translate a Chicano novel into the German language (published by Germany’s premiere literary publishers, Suhrkamp Verlag).
Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González has also been active in journalism, writing for the San Antonio Light and the Los Angeles Times. She has also gained distinction as a teacher and community activist. In 1994 she was selected as one of "Ten Terrific Teachers" at the University of California Santa Barbara; in 1997 she received an award as Outstanding Faculty Member at UCSB “for her dedication and contributions to the education of UCSB students.”
Broyles-González is interested in educational issues and she has volunteered in public schools. In 1994 she piloted the first Chicano Studies course ever taught at a Santa Barbara high school (San Marcos High School). In 1994 she also received an award for Ten Years of Distinguished Service to the Community from a coalition of Santa Barbara community organizations.
Dr. Yolanda Broyles-González is married to Mexican harp player Francisco González. They have two children: Esmeralda Guadalupe Broyles-González (16) and Francisco Broyles-González (21).