Marcial Gonzalez

UTSA hosts Oct. 24 lecture on Chicano literature

(Oct. 23, 2003)--The UTSA Department of English, Classics and Philosophy presents a lecture by UTSA Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Minority Fellow Marcial Gonzalez at 4 p.m., Friday, Oct. 24 in Frio Street Building Room 1.512 at the Downtown Campus.

Gonzalez, an assistant professor of English at UC Berkeley, will speak on "Reification, Totality and the Chicana/o Novel."

The lecture, free and open to all, draws from his book, "The Dialectics of Form: Reification, Totality and the Chicano Novel."

The book explores seven contemporary Chicano/a novels, including Oscar Zeta Acosta's "Revolt of the Cockroach People" (1973) and Ronald Ruiz's "Happy Birthday Jesus" (1994).

Gonzalez currently teaches Chicana/o literature and has additional expertise in 20th century American literature, literary and cultural theory, and comparative studies in race and ethnicity.

A California native, Gonzalez worked for ten years as a farm worker and union organizer in California's central valley before going on to earn his B.A. degree (summa cum laude) at Humboldt State University, an M.A. at the University of Utah and a Ph.D. at Stanford University.

He is described by several reviewers as an extraordinarily talented and promising scholar, and is currently working on a collection of short story fiction.

For more information, contact Bill Mullen at 210-458-5351.