Dr. Miguel Juarez

Dr. Miguel Juárez is a first-generation, multi-disciplinary scholar, educator, and historian and sometimes artist. He teaches History courses at the University of Texas at El Paso, and History and Mexican American History courses at El Paso Community College.  He was born and raised in El Paso, Texas and attended Roosevelt Elementary and Aoy Elementary Schools in Second Ward (Segundo Barrio); and Bel Air Middle and Bel Air High schools in East El Paso. He received his BA, one of his MA’s, and his PhD from UTEP. He received his MLS from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo under the Arthur A. Schomburg Fellowship Program (also known as the SUNY Graduate Diversity Fellowship Program). Dr. Juárez was formerly an academic librarian at five Tier 1 institutions: at the Oscar A. Silverman Library at SUNY Buffalo; at both the Main Library and Center for Creative Photography (CCP) Library at University of Arizona; at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives at Texas A&M University; at the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) at UCLA; and at the University of North Texas in Denton. He has published three books: Colors on Desert Walls: The Murals of El Paso, with photographs by Cynthia Weber Farah (Texas Western Press, 1997); Where Are All the Librarians of Color: The Experiences of People of Color in Academia, co-edited with Rebecca Hankins (Library Juice Press, 2016); and Frontera Freeways: Highway Building and Displacement in El Paso, Texas (University of North Texas Press, October, 2025). Frontera Freeways incorporates accessible Mexican American history, urban history, and regional planning, as well as sociological aspects of race and the built environment in a borderland's context with a focus on African American and Latinx neighborhoods.  Juárez has also published over 150 articles in online newspapers and presented dozens of papers and presentations at university and national and international professional conferences. In 1993, his drawings were published in Bakunin, The Trouble with Los Angeles, A Special Issue Focusing on the Simi Valley Verdict, the L.A. Riots, and Race Relations (Volume Four, Number 1, Summer, 27). Dr. Juárez has donated many of his paintings, photographs and recent book to the annual Border AIDS Partnership Annual Art Auction, https://borderaidspartnership.org/. In 2019, the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Tejas FOCO (Chapter) awarded him the Best Dissertation in Mexican American History in Texas Award at their annual conference in Houston. He has previously taught Feminist Film courses in the Women’s & Gender Studies Program and a course he developed titled “Disability in the Humanities” in the Humanities Program.