Manuel Avalos, Arizona State University-West
Council 2004-05

Manuel Avalos is associate professor of political science in the department of social and behavioral sciences, associate vice provost for research and faculty development, and associate director of the Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University, West. He received his doctoral degree at the University of New Mexico and did postdoctoral work at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

His current research focuses on questions of racial inequality in the Americas, and the political incorporation of the Latino elector-ate at the state, local, and national level. He is currently working on the completion of an analysis of the impact of the Latino vote on the 2000 Presidential election with special emphasis on Arizona and the impact of the 2000 political redistricting process on Latino political representation in Arizona. He teaches courses on American national government, quantitative research methods, Latino politics, race and politics, and on the ways in which science fiction literature impacts political futures.

His publications have appeared in Sociological Perspectives, Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, Policy Studies Journal, as well as articles in edited volumes by Roberto de Anda, Chicanas and Chicanos in Contemporary Society and in Rodolfo de la Garza and Louis DeSipio, eds. Ethnic Ironies and Awash in the Mainstream: Latino Politics in the 1996 Elections.

He is one of founding members of the APSA organized section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (REP) and has served as the section co-president, section co-program chair, moderator for the section list server (RACE-POL), on the REP best book awards committee, and is currently the chair of the best dissertation awards committee of REP. He has also served as co-chair of the Latino caucus within APSA, served on the APSA Committee on the Status of Latina/os in the Profession, and contributed to the proposal to establish the Latino Fund as part of the APSA centennial campaign. In 2001, he was awarded the first APSA Ada Sosa Riddell Award for the mentoring of undergraduate Latina/o students.

As a member of the council, he will work to insure that the needs and perspectives of relatively underrepresented voices will be considered in the decision-making apparatus of the APSA.