A notorious Mexican-American literature professor, public intellectual, artist, and sometime troublemaker, William Nericcio was born in the fabled "Streets of Laredo," Texas, or at Mercy Hospital, at any rate, in 1961. For thirteen years he labored under the watchful, at times sinister, eyes of sisters, brothers, and priests at Blessed Sacrament Elementary and St. Augustine High School--no doubt this contributes to the rumors that he was "raised by nuns" that makes its way around the internets. With an undergraduate degree in English honors from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA/PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University, Nericcio now works as the Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University--these postings followed a stint as an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut from 1988 to 1991 after his years freezing in Ithaca, New York (it also follows on his years as a bartender in Austin, Texas at the famous Cactus Cafe and defunct Texas Tavern cantinas).
Nericcio is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles in journals including Camera Obscura, Americas Review, Spring, the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, and Mosaic. In 2007, The University of Texas Press published his American Library Association award-winning cultural studies volume Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America. His next book, Talking #browntv: Latinas and Latinos on the Screen, written with Frederick Luis Aldama, appears with the Ohio State University Press, December 2019.
Nericcio is also the author of two edited collections (Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck's Enduring Voice for California and The Hurt Business: Oliver Mayer's Early Works [+] PLUS) for San Diego State University Press. Most recently, he assisted philosopher Mark Richard Wheeler with his critical anthology, 150 Years of Evolution: Darwin's Impact on Contemporary Thought and Culture for SDSU Press and helped edit and design Secession, with Amy Sara Carroll, with Hyperbole Books.
