Lani Cupchoy

A public historian-artist-photographer-filmmaker, Dr. Lani Cupchoy earned her B.A. from UCLA, M.A. from California State University at Los Angeles, and Ph.D. from UC Irvine all in History. Her research focuses on Public Culture, Transnational History, Oral History, Chicanx-Latinx Studies, Asian American-Pacific Island Studies, Ethnic and Gender Studies, Indigenous Populations, Critical Food Studies, Public Scholarship, and Civic Engagement, particularly through social and cultural expressions by people of color. She has authored several publications including "Fragments of Memory" in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 31:1, 2010 and "Breaking the University Myth," Diálogo, 21:2, 2018. Her article, which appeared in Yes! Magazine, captures the story of Bell Gardens Elementary school teacher Leslie Hiatt and her students who inspired AB 146 into a law requiring that the unconstitutional deportation of Mexican-Americans during the 1930s be included in California textbooks. Focusing on Hiatt and her students, Lani's award-winning documentary, Truthseekers (2016) illuminates the power of youth activism, community engagement, and ethnic studies. The documentary short received the Inspirational Justice Award from the Social Justice Film Festival and was utilized as reference and for sound bites in Latino USA "The Kids Who Got 'The Mexican Repatriation' of the 1930s Into California Textbooks." Other projects include educational films such as the documentary short Breath Hawaiian (2014), A-Z Dance-Performing Arts short film (2015), and Dual Immersion short film (2017). Her new project Urban Seeds (2019) highlights the story of a grassroots school-based garden movement's extraordinary passion for food justice in urban Los Angeles and their fight to transform neighborhoods and schools into healthier communities.