I’m Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in English and Director of the University-Wide Writing Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I’m also affiliated with Latino Studies as core faculty. I serve as a member of the Faculty advisory board for the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy. I’m also a member of the Faculty Staff Union and the Undoing Racism Assembly.
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I have two last names. Carvajal is my first last name, and Regidor is my second. If you’re looking to cite my work, you can use: Carvajal Regidor, María Paz.
One of my major research projects is a multi-method (archival and ethnographic) project that focuses on Latinx students’ literacy and language practices. This project stems from my dissertation, which was awarded the 2022 James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award. I use La Casa Cultural Latina’s (the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Latinx cultural center) institutional and non-institutional archives to better understand how past students have used their literacy and language practices, particularly in publications. Ethnographic interviews with alumni, administrators, and current students help me connect the past to the present and to highlight the voices and literate and language practices of current and past UIUC students. My goal is to bring attention to the varied ways of knowing that Latinx students possess and how they use those in their writing to transform educational contexts. I seek to use socially, racially, and linguistic justice frameworks to better support Latinx students in higher education by centering their lived experiences, counterstories, and resistance.
My teaching, research, and administration are in service of Latinx students and all who have been historically marginalized in educational contexts. My work is driven by my experiences as a Latina and as a bilingual woman of color and my commitment to making the educational experiences of Latinx students more equitable and fulfilling.
My research agenda also includes writing center research. For instance, I study how to better support graduate students, first-generation students, and faculty of color in the writing center. More information about my ongoing research is available on my research page.
Beyond UMB, I’m a member of the College Composition and Communication Conference Latinx Caucus. The Caucus has been central to my scholarly trajectory. Along with other Caucus members, I’m co-editor of Viva Nuestro Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of our Caucus (Parlor Press, 2019).
You can find out more about me and my work by navigating to different pages on this site: research, teaching, and administration.