This spring, the Department of Latina/Latino Studies is excited to welcome professor Aja Y. Martinez as an associate professor. She is a critical race theory scholar and storyteller and author of the multi-award-winning book Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory. Her new book co-authored with Robert O. Smith (University of North Texas), The Origins of Critical Race Theory: The People and Ideas that Created a Movement, was recently published by NYU Press. Professor Martinez is co-editor and co-founder, with Michele Eodice and Sandra Tarabochia (University of Oklahoma), of the transdisciplinary, digital open-access, and multimodal journal Writers: Craft and Context. She is also co-editor, with Dr. Stacey Waite (University of Nebraska) of the University of Pittsburgh Press's series Composition, Literacy, and Culture. Read on for a Q&A with professor Martinez about her work. 

What are your research interests and why are you passionate about these areas of study?

As a critical race theory (CRT) scholar, I consider myself a voice from the humanities, specifically from a field called rhetoric & writing studies. In graduate school my program had all white faculty; the materials were also dominated by white voices and perspectives. I wasn’t represented in terms of who was teaching me and what was being taught, and I was struggling. I didn’t know what I was going to do, what my project was going to be, and I was being discriminated against within the program through lack of mentorship and push out culture. So, I was really reaching, just grasping, trying to make sense of it all. At one point during coursework, by chance, I was assigned an anthology where there was a singular reference to critical race theory. Interestingly enough, something about that term was inviting to me, and the more I followed the bibliographic rabbit hole of references I realized this work began to give me tools to make sense of and better articulate what was happening to me in this grad program. Up to this point I hadn’t had the mentorship, the teachers, the theories, the pedagogy, the methods to guide me in the ways that my CRT teachers were now providing. CRT scholars such as Mari Matsuda and Paul Butler have said that although they didn’t study with (CRT founder) Derrick Bell, they felt they were students of Derrick Bell. I feel like similarly. Although I wasn’t a student of any one CRT scholar in particular, I have learned much from them. 

Why did you decide to join the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois?

As I said to my now new colleagues during my job interview, I was eager to join a department of high performing, accomplished, and interdisciplinary scholars. I joked that joining LLS would almost be like transferring to a faster running group like when you’re training for a big race. Everyone in this department is brilliant and a leader or emerging voice in their own field/discipline, and I saw myself reflected in the profiles of the LLS faculty. Additionally, my interdisciplinary work as a CRT scholar, particularly one in an English department, was becoming less and less legible to my former colleagues, who silo themselves disciplinarily, and had trouble imagining work that reached beyond the walls of our department. Last, I was teaching in Texas, which is a state hostile to the work I do, so my decision to look for a new position, particularly in a state like Illinois, was an additional motivating factor to join this stellar department and university.

You’re publishing a book this spring, The Origins of Critical Race Theory: The People and Ideas That Created a Movement. Can you tell us about it?

This new book, co-authored with my writing and research partner, Robert O. Smith, explores the lives and intellectual influences of the creators of critical race theory (CRT)—a vital movement and discipline in American legal scholarship, that has transformed our understanding of systemic racism. Yet despite insightful analysis revealing the threads of racism embedded in American institutions and society, it has been demonized by opponents at every turn, with numerous state legislators now seeking to ban its use in the classroom. The Origins of Critical Race Theory weaves together the many sources of critical race theory, recounting the origin story for one of the most insightful and controversial academic movements in U.S. history. In addition to introducing readers to the tenets and key insights of critical race theory, we explore the lives and intellectual influences of the movement’s founders, shedding light on how the many components of critical race theory eventually formed into a movement. Through archival research and interviews with scholars like Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and Jean Stefancic, we provide the personal side of critical race theory. We reveal that despite the Marxist menace it has recently been made out to be, critical race theory is an organic extension of the Civil Rights movement, a deeply human and deeply American response to ongoing systemic injustice and inequity. An insightful exploration into the story of a movement, The Origins of Critical Race Theory narrates the hidden influences, fascinating characters, and intellectual struggles that informed critical race theory’s inception.

What classes will you teach?

This semester, Spring 2025, I am teaching LLS 468 Latino/as and the Law.

What key ideas or lessons do you hope to impart to your students?

I hope to impart that students keep their options open and think about inter/transdisciplinarity. One of the best aspects of my education has been the exploration I have allowed my studies to take me on from an undergraduate degree in the social sciences, to graduate degrees in the humanities, to a dissertation and eventual specialization that incorporates scholarship from the fields of legal studies, sociology and education. This multivalent perspective has pushed me to seek out the work of scholars who I might not have otherwise been aware of if I had just “stayed in my disciplinary lane” through what I was offered in course work alone. The work of a CRT scholar can feel isolated and lonely if you are at a graduate or professional program where matters of race and racism are not the concern of faculty in their research or the courses they teach. You’ll find a severe lack of mentorship. But you can find your teachers and mentors in the scholarship, and sometimes, with luck, you can connect with those very scholars who wrote the work that nurtured and sustained you.

Are there any other projects you are working on right now?

Beyond this book project, the archival research Smith and I conducted in CRT founder Derrick Bell’s archive engages with both public and academic audiences in a series of new projects that include three more book-length projects, a CRT theoretical introductory chapter for a Routledge collection, a SAGE encyclopedia entry, CRT symposia in three academic journals, and a special double issue on CRT of College English.