Alyshia Gálvez

(she/her/hers)

I am a professor in the Dept. of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College and the Department of Anthropology at the Graduate Center.

Alyshia Gálvez is a cultural and medical anthropologist. She is professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College and of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies and the Destruction of Mexico (UC Press, 2018) on changing food policies, systems and practices in Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States, including the ways they are impacted by trade and economic policy, and their public health implications. She is the author of two previous books on Mexican migration, Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care and the Birth Weight Paradox (Rutgers University Press, Oct. 2011, winner of the 2012 ALLA Book Award from the Association of Latino and Latin American Anthropologists) and Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Immigrants (NYU Press, Dec. 2009).

Contact

(718) 960-5115

Academic Interests

I am interested in food, health, migration, trade, policy, citizenship and rights, Mexico and Mexican populations, Latin America, and Latinx communities in the United States, public health, health disparities, medical anthropology, gender, reproduction, chronic disease, religion, and performance.

Education

2004    PhD, Cultural Anthropology, New York University. Thesis title: In the name of GuadalupeReligion, politics andcitizenship among Mexicans in New York

2001    Certificate of Culture and Media, Center for Media, Culture and History, New York University.

2000    M.A., Dept. of Anthropology, New York University. 

1995    B.A., Columbia College, Columbia University.

Publications

Books: 

Monographs:

2018    Eating NAFTATrade, Food Policies and the Destruction of Mexico, Berkeley: University of California Press. (Honorable Mention, Book of the Year, Mexico Section of the Latin American Studies Association, 2019.)

2011    Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers: Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care, and the Birthweight Paradox, book based on medical anthropology research over two years at various sites in New York City. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, Critical Issues in Health and Medicine Series. Awarded the 2012 ALLA Book Award by theAssociation of Latino and Latin American Anthropologists.

2009    Guadalupe in New YorkDevotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Immigrants. New Yorkand London: New York University Press, December 2009. Translated into Spanish and published as Nueva YorkGuadalupana, Puebla: Editorial de la Universidad Iberoamericana de Puebla (2013).

Edited volume:

2007    Performing Religion in the AmericasMedia, Politics, and Devotional Practices of the 21st Century, Gálvez, editor,and author of two pieces: “Introduction” and, “‘She Made Us Human’: The Relationship between the Virgin ofGuadalupe, Popular Religiosity and Activism among Members of Mexican Devotional Organizations in New YorkCity,” 2007, Berg/Seagull (London). 

 

Peer reviewed articles and chapters (recent):

2021 Gálvez, A. “Paqueteros and paqueteras: Humanizing a dehumanized food system,” Gastronomica. Issue 21.1, Spring 2021, https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica/article/21/1/27/116217/Paqueteros-and-PaqueterasHumanizing-a-Dehumanized

2020 Bravo, Lizbeth; Edith Carrasco; Kathryn Chuber; Daisy Flores; and Gálvez, A., “Teaching and learning with intimidating texts: How we came to love a difficult book” Teaching and Learning Anthropology journal, Vol 3 (1), July 2020. https://doi.org/10.5070/T33143605

2020 Gálvez, A. “Taking Susto Seriously: A Critique of Behavioral Approaches to Diabetes,” and “Chronic Disaster: Reimagining Noncommunicable Chronic Disease” with Megan Carney and Emily Yates-Doerr In Vital Topics Forum: Chronic Disaster: Reimagining NonCommunicable Chronic Disease, The Nutrire CoLab (Diana Burnett; Megan A. Carney; Lauren Carruth; Sarah Chard; Maggie Dickinson; Alyshia Gálvez; Hanna Garth; Jessica Hardin; Adele Hite; Heather Howard; Lenore Manderson; Emily Mendenhall; Abril Saldaña-Tejeda; Dana Simmons; Natali Valdez; Emily Vasquez; Megan Warin; Emily Yates-Doerr). American Anthropologist, Sept. 2020. DOI: 10.1111/aman.13443 and 10.1111/aman.13437.

2019    Gálvez, A. “Efficiency,” in “Rural Social Forms,” A special issue of the Journal for the Anthropology of North America, Edited by Alex Blanchette and Marcel LaFlamme, Published Nov. 20, 2019. 10.1002/nad.12096

2019    Gálvez, A. “Transnational mother blame: Protecting and caring in a globalized context,” Medical Anthropology, Published online 10/3/2019. DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2019.1653866.


2019    Gálvez, A. and Luque Brazan, J.C.. “Capitalismo de chupacabras en una era post-política y post-migratoria,” Huellas de la Migración,  [S.l.], v. 4, n. 7, p. 109-138, jul. 2019. ISSN 2594-2832. 

2018    Gálvez, A. “Critical understandings of children’s rights: an inductive approach” for the edited volume, International Perspectives on Practice and Research into Children’s Rights, BAICE (the British affiliate of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies).

Other publications (recent)

2021 Gálvez, A. “The Future Is Now: Alyshia Gálvez and Sean Sherman On Building Indigenous Futures,” Mold Magazine, April 8, 2021, https://thisismold.com/degrowth/degrowth-indigenous-food-labs-sean-sherman.

2020 Gálvez, A. “In Central Park, White Privilege Has Been Weaponized Before,” The New York Daily News, May 27, 2020, https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-racist-central-park-white-privilege-20200527-pgvvyowcbfcrnp2cjoivigwxdm-story.html. 

2020 The Nutrire CoLab (Diana Burnett; Megan A. Carney; Lauren Carruth; Sarah Chard; Maggie Dickinson; Alyshia Gálvez; Hanna Garth; Jessica Hardin; Adele Hite; Heather Howard; Lenore Manderson; Emily Mendenhall; Abril Saldaña-Tejeda; Dana Simmons; Natali Valdez; Emily Vasquez; Megan Warin; Emily Yates-Doerr). “Anthropologists Respond to The Lancet EAT Commission” Bionatura, Published online 01/05/2020, http://dx.doi.org/10.21931/RB/2020.05.01.2.

2020 Gálvez, A. “Food for Healing: Food Sovereignty Movements in Mexican and Mexican-American Communities,” in Religion in Mexico and Mexican-American Communities, blog of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University, Jan. 3, 2020.

2019 Gálvez, A. “Human Centered Trade: Still Possible?” For A Better World, Sep. 2019, https://fairworldproject.org/human-centered-trade-still-possible/ 

2019 Gálvez, A. “Nuestra América: True Hemispheric Unification,” UC Press Blog, May 24, 2019, https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/44369/nuestra-america-true-hemispheric-unification/ 

2019 Gálvez, A. and Megan Carney. “The Illusion and Peril of Food “Choice,” Sapiens, May 3, 2019, https://www.sapiens.org/culture/food-choices-insecurity/

2019 Gálvez, A. “NAFTA 2.0 — More Deadly Than the Drug War, the Top Causes of Death in Mexico and Why the US Should be Concerned,” Penn Law Blog, March 14, 2019, https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/8911-nafta-20more-deadly-than-the-drug-war-the-top

2019 Carney, Megan and A. Gálvez, “The International Politics of Gut Health,” Scientific American blog, March 14, 2019, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-international-politics-of-gut-health/

2019 Gálvez, A. “At a Beloved Mexican Restaurant, An Arrest Sparks Outrage,” Civil Eats, Jan 18, 2019, https://civileats.com/2019/01/18/at-a-beloved-mexican-restaurant-in-the-bronx-an-arrest-sparks-outrage/

Positions

Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies, Lehman College
Professor, Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center