Norma Elia Cantu
UTSA English professor to do novel reading
(Sept. 3, 2002)--University of Texas at San Antonio faculty member Norma Elia Cantu will present "A platica on life and writing" from 6-8 p.m. Sept. 9 at the Downtown Campus, Buena Vista Street Building Room 1.328. She will also read from her novel, "Canicula: Snapshots of Girlhood en la Frontera."
Cantu, who is a professor of English in the College of Liberal and Fine Arts, recently co-edited an anthology "Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change," and is working on a book about matachines, a religious dance tradition celebrated in Mexico and the American southwest.
Cantu received a B.S. from Texas A&I University, an M.S. from Texas A&I University and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She taught at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and at Texas A&M International University before coming to UTSA. Cantu's teaching and research interests include Chicano literature, U.S. Latina/o literature, creative writing,border studies, women's studies and folklore.
She was acting director for the Center for Chicano Studies, the University of California, Santa Barbara and a senior arts specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts, Folk and Traditional Arts Program, as well as interim dean of the School of Education and Arts and Sciences and chairperson of the Division of Arts & Sciences at Texas A&M International University.
She has received many honors including an Award of Merit from the Association of Women in Communications, San Antonio; the Outstanding Alumni Award from the College of Arts and Science, University of Nebraska; a Fulbright-Hays Post Doctoral Research Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Chicano Dissertation Completion Grant; and a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship to Spain.
Cantu has published two books, "Soldiers of the Cross: Los Matachines dela Santa Cruz," Texas A & M University Press, and "Changing Chicana Traditions," co-edited with Olga Najera Ramirez, University of Illinois Press. Additionally, she has published articles in Southern Folklore and a number of anthologies, as well as numerous poems, short stories, book reviews and essays.
A limited number of Cantus's books will be available for purchase at the reading, and she will sign books. Sponsored by the office of UTSA's vice president for extended services, Cantu's presentation is free and open to the public.
For more information, call (210) 458-2401.
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