Research Interests

• How knowledge (i.e. knowledge of place, ceremony, identity, and history), particularly Indigenous and regional knowledge, is maintained as people move across borders.
• How knowledge serves as capital to assist migrating peoples in negotiating the new spaces they occupy.
• How Mexican American women and Chicanas use family and community knowledge to sustain them and their communities.
• How oral traditions function as modes of healing.

Academic Publications:

•   "Literature", "Violence", "Canadian Border", "The Devil's Highway", "Texas", and "Military Recruitment"; entries in Encyclopedia of Undocumented Immigration
• "Recovering the Rain", The Journal of MALCS
• "Writing from the Heart: Historia of a Banned Book," Arizona Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
•  "Wearing Native America", Enduring Questions series, www.abc-clio.org, 2012
• "Why We need Native American Studies", Enduring Questions series, www.abc-clio.org.

Awards:

• Research Grant, Department of History, University of Arizona. Spring 2015.
• SBS Graduate College Fellowship, University of Arizona. Fall 2014.
• Graduate Access Fellowship, University of Arizona. Fall 2013.

Courses Taught

• American Indian Health and Wellness
• Overview of Mexican American Studies
• American Indian Oral Traditions
• American Indian Literature

Memberships

Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS)

National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies (NACCS)

Andrea has worked as a research/publications specialist, a freelance writer, editor and writing consultant. Her most recent projects have included working as an editor for Veronica E. Velarde Tiller's book, Culture and Customs of the Apache Indians (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2010) and serving as the Project Researcher/Writer of the award-winning Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country: Economic Profiles of American Indian Reservations published by BowArrow Publishing (2005). Her essay "Prayers and other Ofrendas" appeared in Wisdom of Our Mothers (Familia Books, 2010).

Andrea is also a published poet with works appearing in La Bloga, The Blue Guitar, La Sagrada, Tribal Fires, Collegiate Latino Underground, Red Ink, and the Cuentos del Barrio II art exhibition of the Tucson/Pima Arts Council. Two of her poems were selected for the 2010 commemorative issue of El Coraje, a Chicano Studies student publication produced for the Conference Combating Hate, Censorship and Forbidden Curriculum held in Tucson. She has work forthcoming in Poetry of Resistance published by the University of Arizona Press.

In addition to her studies, Andrea is the Outreach Coordinator at the University of Arizona Writing Skills Improvement Program, where she also provides instructional services to undergraduate and graduate students and teaches writing workshops for high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, and the general Tucson community. 

Andrea is formerly a member of the moderating panel for the Facebook page "Poets Responding to SB 1070" and the women's writing group, Sowing the Seeds de Tucson. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction essays appear in the group’s anthology, Our Spirits, Our Realities.

 Read interviews with Andrea:

"The battle over Mexican American Studies" by Chrissie Long, University World News

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120824101851900

"Does Tucson need Three Poet Laureates to bring it back from the brink of censorship?" by Jeff Biggers, The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/tucson-poet-laureate_b_1396176.html