Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 8th Edition

Rodolfo F. Acuña received his Ph.D. in 1968 from the University of Southern California in Latin American Studies. A teacher in the Los Angeles City Schools from 1958–1965, he transferred to community colleges, where he taught for three years. In 1969, Acuña was the founding chair of Chicano Studies at San Fernando Valley State (today California State University Northridge), which is the largest in the United States with 30 tenured professors. Black Issues in Higher Education selected Acuna as one of the “100 Most Influential Educators of the 20th Century”; three of his works have received the Gustavus Myers Award for an Outstanding Book on Race Relations in North America. He has also received the Distinguished Scholar Award from National Association for Chicano Studies, and numerous academic and community service awards, such as an homenaje from the University of Guadalajara Feria Internacional del Libro and the State of Guadalajara, Mexico, for the Outstanding Scholar of U.S.–Mexico Studies; the Emil Freed Award for Community Service; Southern California Social Science Library; the Founder's Award for Community Service from the Liberty Hill Foundation; academic fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies Award; the Rockefeller Humanities Scholar’s Grant. Acuña was also a founder of the Latin American Civic Association Headstart program. Acuña was under contract as a columnist for the Los Angeles Herald-Express and the Los Angeles Times from 1986 to 1992, and has contributed to leading newspapers and magazines. He is currently featured in Counterpunch, a magazine founded by the late Alexander Cockburn. Among his best-known books are Latino Voices (Greenwood Press, 2008); Corridors of Migration: the Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600–1933 (Arizona 2007); US Latinos: An Inquiry (Greenwood Press, 2003); Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 7th edition (Longman, 2011); Sometimes There is No Other Side: Essays on Truth and Objectivity (Notre Dame, 1998); Anything But Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles (Verso Press, 1996); and The Making Of Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academe (Rutgers 2011).  Acuña has also written three children’s books and has three other books in production.