Silvia Soto
Assistant Professor and Department Coordinator
Contact
Office
Nichols Hall 228Office Hours
Dr. Silvia Soto is an assistant professor in Chicano and Latino Studies and associate chair of Native American Studies at Sonoma State University. She earned her doctoral degree from the University of California, Davis in Native American Studies and her master’s degree from the University of New Mexico in Latin American Studies. Her research focuses on the contemporary Maya literary movement of Chiapas, Mexico, more specifically on concepts of identity formation, gender relations, and cosmovisions. Her publications thus far have centered on specific aspects of contemporary Maya writers’ literary production. These include, “Rebuilding a Mayan World: Awakening, Presence, and Possibilities,” published in Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World (2017) and “‘A World Where Many Worlds Fit:’ Zapatismo and the Reconstruction of a Mayan World in Chiapas” in the anthology Violence and Indigenous Communities: Confronting the Past and Engaging the Present by Northwestern University Press (2021). Prior to joining Sonoma State, she was a visiting assistant professor and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in American Indian Studies where she taught courses on Indigenous knowledge systems. Dr. Soto’s book Caracoleando Among Worlds: Reconstructing Maya Worldviews in Chiapas by the University of Arizona Press is forthcoming in the fall of 2024.