Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black

Charlene Villaseñor Black is currently Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Professor Villaseñor Black is a leading expert on a range of topics related to contemporary Latinx art, the early modern Iberian world and Chicanx studies. 

Professor Villaseñor Black’s expertise will make a valuable contribution to the breadth of subjects offered as part of Oxford’s teaching and research in the History of Art. In 2016, she was awarded UCLA’s Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence for exceptional teaching, innovative research, and strong commitment to university services. Her proposed undergraduate course at Oxford expands the definition of American art by positioning Hispanic art of the United States, from the 18th-century to the present day, at the heart of what it means to be ‘American'. 

Professor Villaseñor Black is editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and founding editor-in-chief of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (UC Press). Her most recent books include Renaissance Futurities: Art, Science, Invention and Knowledge for Justice: An Ethnic Studies Reader (both from 2019), the new 2020 edition of The Chicano Studies Reader, and Autobiography without Apology: The Personal Essay in Latino Studies, which she co-edited.

While at Oxford, Professor Villaseñor Black will be conducting research related to her current book project and upcoming exhibition, to be mounted at USC’s Fisher Museum of Art in 2024, in collaboration with the California Institute of Technology’s Graduate Aerospace Laboratories. Entitled Verdant Worlds: Exploration and Sustainability across the Cosmos, this project takes as its theme the twin roots of exploration and sustainability in the early modern Hispanic-Anglosphere.