Rate My Professor Ella Maria Diaz

Dr. Ella Maria Diaz is Professor and Department Chair (2022–2025) in the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at San José State University. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William and Mary in 2010, where her dissertation, “Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: The Ongoing Politics of Space & Ethnic Identity,” received the Distinguished Dissertation Award. Diaz holds an M.A. in American Studies from the same institution in 2002, with a thesis titled “1500 by 1939 by 1998—These are the Measurements of Malinche’s Body: An Analysis and Review of Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Nationality,” and a B.A. in American Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1999. Her academic career began as a lecturer in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2006 to 2012, teaching Urban Studies and writing courses for undergraduate and graduate programs. In 2012, she joined Cornell University as faculty in the Department of Literatures in English and the Latina/o Studies Program, earning tenure in 2017 and serving as Associate Professor until 2022.

Diaz’s research specializations center on the art, poetry, performance, and political activism of the Royal Chicano Air Force, a vanguard Chicano/a art collective founded in Sacramento during the U.S. civil rights era. Her monograph Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History (University of Texas Press, 2017) received the 2019 Book Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. She authored José Montoya, A Ver: Revisioning Art History, Volume 12 (Chicano Studies Research Center, 2020), which won Gold Medals for Best Arts Book and Best Biography at the 2020 International Latino Book Awards. Diaz contributed to the anthology Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chican@/Latin@ Young Adult Literature (2020), earning the 2022 Edited Book Award from the Children’s Literature Association. Her essay “The Necessary Theater of the Royal Chicano Air Force” (Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 2013) was anthologized in The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, 1970–2016 (2016). Current projects include essays on Chicano artist José Montoya’s early poetry in the context of digital humanities and analyses of testimonio as an art form across the Americas. She serves on the Editorial Board of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies and as a National Advisory Council member for Rhizomes of Mexican American Art Since 1848.