PLACE: History of Farm Worker Movement
By Raymond W. Rast, Ph.D.
Introduction by LeRoy Chatfield
There is no end to how the history of Cesar Chavez and his farmworker movement can be told. Case in point: Raymond W. Rast, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History and Associate Director of the Center for Oral and Public History at CSU-Fullerton is using “PLACE” to write this history . . . AND he asks for your assistance.
Professor Rast has developed a preliminary list of sites and properties relating to the farmworker movement, but he is asking viewers of the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project – especially former UFW volunteers and supporters – to bring to his attention additional “places” that need to be included. He can be reached at: email@example.com or 657.278.8563.
Raymond W. Rast, Ph.D.
|Teaching interests: U.S. History Since 1877, History of the American West, Public History/Historic Preservation, U.S. Urban History, Racial/Ethnic History, American Cultural History|
|Research interests: Tourism in the American West, San Francisco, Western Literature, Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker Movement, Orange County History|
|Brief biography: A native of Independence, Missouri, I earned the B.A. in History from Yale University in 1995. After brief stints at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, I entered the M.A. program at the University of New Mexico. In 1998, I moved into the Ph.D. program at the University of Washington. During my years in Seattle, I pursued my interests in Western American history, urban history, cultural history, and tourism. I finished my dissertation, “Tourist Town: Tourism and the Emergence of Modern San Francisco, 1869-1915,” and earned my doctorate in 2006. I also worked on historic preservation projects for the National Park Service related to Japanese American internment during WWII and Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker Movement. During the 2006-07 academic year I was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the College of Wooster. I joined the History Department at CSUF in 2007|