Aaron E. Sánchez is an academically trained intellectual historian and freelance writer. Sánchez received his Ph.D. in U.S. history in 2013 from Southern Methodist University.
His writings have appeared in nationally acclaimed journalistic outlets like NPR’s Latino USA and NPR’s Code Switch. He has provided political analysis and commentary for Latino Rebels, News Taco, the Matador Network, and others. His cultural analysis has appeared in the Texas Observer, among other outlets. He has been a regular guest on Washington D.C. public radio WPFW’s Latino Media Collective and he maintains the blog Commentary & Cuentos: Thoughts on Race, Politics, and Popular Culture, which provides historical context and perspective on contemporary issues through a uniquely Latino lens. Award winning journalist, Leon Krauze, has called Sánchez’s writing “endearing and revealing.”
In addition to his work in journalism, he has also worked as a consultant. Sánchez brings Latino focused, historically informed analysis and policy perspectives to social issues in order to create knowledgeable responsive solutions. Central to his mission is showing that Latinos are not apart from the nation, but a central part of the nation. The future is Latino, but only if the correct actions are taken today.
His academic research has focused on the intellectual and cultural history of ethnic Mexicans in the twentieth century. His dissertation, From Pocholandia to Aztlán: Citizenship, Belonging, and Homeland Politics, Texas 1910-1979 won the 2014 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco Dissertation Award, a national award for best dissertation in Chicana/o studies on Texas. Since then, he has been published the Journal of the West, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, the Journal of the South, and others. He is currently working on his manuscript titled Homeland to Nation: The Politics of Belonging in the Twentieth Century.
His next long term research project is the history of modern Latino conservatism in the U.S. The project spans the archives of groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens and the presidential libraries of the last five Republican presidents to show the long history of Latino conservatism in ethnic Mexican political thought. He shows how Latino civil rights social conservatism influenced early groups like Order Sons of America, LULAC, and the American GI Forum until it was unhinged from civil rights during the Chicana/o Movement. After that, Latino conservatism found a ready home in the remaking of the conservative coalition that would define American politics through the two administrations of George W. Bush.
Apart from being a writer and a professor, he is a happy husband, a proud father, an avid runner, and a dog-lover.
