Steering Committee

Mariana Alessandri is an associate professor of philosophy at UTRGV, where she teaches existentialism, Latin American philosophy, religious studies, and the history of philosophy. Mariana and her spouse live on the Mexico-US border with their two children. She is the co-founder of RGV PUEDE (Parents United for Excellent Dual Education) which advocates for and supports Dual-Language Education in Rio Grande Valley public schools. Mariana has published public philosophy in the New York Times, Times Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Ed, New Philosopher Magazine and Womankind. Her book, Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves through Dark Moods will be published by Princeton University Press in May 2023.

Heath W. Carter is associate professor of American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he teaches and writes about the intersection of Christianity and American public life. He earned a BA in English and theology from Georgetown University in 2003, an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2005, and a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame in 2012. He came to Princeton from Valparaiso University, where he was on faculty from 2012 to 2019. He spent the 2016–2017 academic year as the William S. Vaughn Visiting Fellow at Vanderbilt University.

Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Felipe Hinojosa received his Ph.D. from the University of Houston in 2009 and joined the faculty at Texas A&M that same year. On August 2023, he was appointed the Inaugural Jackson Family Chair in Latin America studies.  His research areas include Chicana/o and Latinx Studies, American Religion, Race and Ethnicity, and Social Movements. In addition to serving as Director of the Carlos H. Cantu Hispanic Education & Opportunity Endowment, Prof. Hinojosa serves as editor for the interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and online moderated forum Latinx Talk. His work has appeared in Zócalo Public Square, Western Historical Quarterly, American Catholic Studies, Mennonite Quarterly Review, and in multiple edited collections on Latinx Studies. Dr. Hinojosa’s first book, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) was awarded the 2015 Américo Paredes Book Award for the best book in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies by the Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College. His book, Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio (University of Texas Press, 2021) is set in four major cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston) where in 1969 and 1970 Latine radicals clashed with religious leaders as they occupied churches to protest urban renewal, poverty, police brutality, and racism.

Adriana Nieto is a daughter of Denver’s dust. Her ancestors have migrated up and down the path from El Paso, Texas to Denver, Colorado for generations. She was born in El Paso, Texas with maternal roots in Las Cruces, New Mexico and paternal roots throughout New Mexico. Adriana Nieto is currently the Chair & Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She has been faculty in the Chicana/o Studies department for over 15 years, first as an adjunct, then full time tenure track beginning in fall of 2009. She earned her BA with a double major in Women Studies and Latin American Studies, and MA from the University of New Mexico in Latin American Studies with concentrations in Borderlands History and Gender Studies. She earned her PhD in the Joint Doctoral Program in Religious and Theological Studies at the Iliff School of Theology and University of Denver in 2009.

Her teaching and research interests include Latina spiritualities and practices; mental health among Xicanas in early 20th Century New Mexico; women of color feminisms; Chicana Protestants in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands; oral history; and most recently water in the ‘West’, with special interest in acequia culture and practices in southern Colorado . She strives to integrate the demands of teaching, mentorship and scholarship while also being a mother, partner and healthy muxer.