Centering the Chicana/o/x community in methodology and pedagogy for a HWCU general education curriculum

During the 2023-2025 academic years, 14 faculty members at a midsized private R1 university located in the Rocky Mountain West collaborated to create and teach liberal arts and social sciences courses introducing students to El Movimiento, the U.S. Chicano Movement that began in the 1960s and 1970s that significantly shaped the economic, political, and social historical context of our university’s area. Employing a case study methodology, this article explores how this interdisciplinary faculty group created and enacted our pedagogy, drawing on the traditions of land-based education (Wildcat et al. Citation2014) and Bernal’s (2020) Chicana feminista methodological and pedagogical interventions. We offer insights for other universities, especially HWCUs (Bonilla-Silva & Peoples, Citation2022) looking to integrate land-based, ethnic histories into their general education curriculum. We conclude that localized studies of Chicanx histories can make important contributions to knowledge and community-building among students, faculty, and local publics, particularly during contentious times in higher education.