Janett Barragán Miranda

Janett Barragán Miranda is an Assistant Professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently working on her book manuscript, tentatively titled Hungry for Equality: The Mexican-Origin Community in the Struggle for Food Justice, a monograph examining the Mexican-origin community and its fight for food justice in the 1960s. This study focuses on federal food assistance programs, including the Food Stamps Program, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the National School Lunch Program, revealing that food assistance often served to racialize poor people throughout the U.S. Southwest. In her research, Barragán Miranda has utilized archival repositories and conducted oral history interviews, and her work has been published in the Latino Studies Journal.

Barragán Miranda earned a M.A. and Ph.D. in Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She served as a visiting fellow in the History of Science Department at Harvard University and as a Postdoctoral Fellow for Academic Diversity at American University. Through her experiences, Barragán Miranda has engaged with students and colleagues. She was a mentor in the Latinx Mentorship Program at American University, where she guided undergraduates in pursuing their degrees. Additionally, she mentored at WriteGirl, a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring young women to pursue careers in writing. As a first-generation college student and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, Barragán Miranda understands the importance of mentorship and community building, and she is dedicated to contributing to these efforts in the Latina/Latino Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.