I conduct research in two main areas. One area explores the literacy and language practices of Latinx college students. In this project, titled “‘I’ll Find a Way to Make my Voice Heard:’ Transformational Literacies of Latinx Students,” I use archival and ethnographic methods alongside critical race theory to understand how Latinx students use their literacies and language in and outside of higher education. I argue that Latinx students deploy their diverse ways of knowing, literacies, and writing as vehicles for activism and resistance despite facing instances of educational trauma throughout their educational trajectories. My goal is to learn from Latinx students so that writing instructors, administrators, and writing center professionals can better support them as writers, students, and human beings. My dissertation, which is the basis of this work, was awarded the 2022 James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award.
The second strand of my research focuses on writing centers. The aim of my research in this area is creating more socially just and race-conscious writing centers and supporting first-generation students, graduate students, and faculty of color. For instance, in my co-written article, It’s Crowded in Here: “Present Others” in Advanced Graduate Writers’ Sessions, I examine how graduate students’ writing and feedback networks can shape writing center practices to more holistically support graduate writers. Some of my additional ongoing research focuses on the roles that writing groups play in the experiences of faculty of color, and on exploring consultants’ retention and how a writing center’s mission impacts their local work. At the core of these projects is a commitment to social, racial, and linguistic justice.
Scholarship
Journal Articles
Carvajal Regidor, María Paz. (2023). “I’m a Bad Writer”: Latina College Students’ Traumatic Literacy Experiences. College English, 86(1).
Wisniewski, Carolyn, María Paz Carvajal Regidor, Lisa Chason, Evin Groundwater, Allison Kranek, Dorothy Mayne, & Logan Middleton. (2021). Questioning Assumptions about Online Tutoring: A Mixed-Method Study of Face-to-Face and Synchronous Online Writing Center Tutorials. The Writing Center Journal, 38(1).
Kranek, Allison & María Paz Carvajal Regidor. (2021). It’s Crowded in Here: “Present Others” in Advanced Graduate Writers’ Sessions. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal.
Book Chapters
Carvajal Regidor, María Paz. (2023). (En)Countering Archival Silences: Critical Lenses, Relationships, and Informal Archives. In Gesa Kirsch, Romeo Garcia, Caitlin Burns, & Walker Smith (Eds.), Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal and Digital Archives. Southern Illinois University Press.
Carvajal Regidor, Ignacio, María Paz Carvajal Regidor, Marta E. Carvajal-Regidor, & Mónica Carvajal Regidor. (2022). Which Central Americans? Migration, Language, and Mobility in the films Ixcanul (Guatemala) and El Regreso (Costa Rica). In Gloria E. Chacón, & Mónica Albizúrez (Eds.), Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context. Modern Language Association.
Carvajal Regidor, María Paz. (2019). Forging a Path: Felipe de Ortego y Gasca. In Romeo García, Iris D. Ruiz, Anita Hernández, & María Paz Carvajal Regidor (Eds.), Viva Nuestro Caucus: Re-writing the Forgotten Pages of our Caucus. Parlor Press.
Edited Collection
Romeo García, Iris D. Ruiz, Anita Hernández, & María Paz Carvajal Regidor (Eds.). (2019). Viva Nuestro Caucus: Rewriting the Forgotten Pages of our Caucus. Parlor Press.