Degrees prior to starting this degree program:

A.B Sociocultural Anthropology. University of California, Davis. 2024. summa cum laude
A.B. Chicana/o/x Studies, University of California, Davis. 2024. summa cum laude
A.A. Sociology, Butte College. 2021
A.A. Social & Behavioral Science, Butte College. 2021

Areas of Interest:

Race & Capitalism, Urban Design & Architecture, Feminist Theory, Human/Non-Human Relations, Science & Technology Studies, Experimental Writing 

Field Research Plans/History:

A first generation, queer Chicanx scholar, Jose Angel Santana Guerra (They/Them) explores how revitalization’s discourses– commonly called gentrification–entangle multiple temporal, spatial, and material existences to constitute both the urban ground, the planetary environment. Their work examines the semiotics of race as an urbanization device that is potentially life and death making.

Santana thinks through the politics of (non)vitality as it relates to race, the built form, and human/non-human becomings. Understanding cities as made through palimpsests of archives - some designed in concrete, written in paper, or excavated from geological strata - they intend to explore connections between racial dis/re-locations in urban space and the environmental dis/re-locations of the ailing Earth. Through this lens, Santana wonders how vegetal, aquatic, and terrestrial worlds are re/un-made in sand mining for concrete, iron mining for steel, logging for wood, and their subsequent assemblings in urban design and architectural forms. 

By interrogating the inscription practices that transform violence into something barely or even non-perceptible, Santana considers how affects, memories, and vestiges of all kinds are obscured across both architectures and landscapes, thus inquiring about unarchived futures, and unarchivable pasts. In contemplating the loss of place within place, they simultaneously ruminate on survival and life-making through the patchiness of Capitalist devastation. 

In their personal life, Santana is a poet, zine maker, music collector, caretaker of succulents, and parent of two children.

Publications, Multimedia Projects:

• Whose Life Thrives Through the Death of Tomorrow? The Material-Temporal Politics of Revitalization in Sacramento’s Oak Park. 2024. McNair Scholars Journal.

Membership/activities in graduate student events or organizations:

• American Association of Anthropology
• Critical Urban Anthropology Association
• National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies

Intramural affiliations:

Princeton Graduate Scholars Program (GSP)