Joel Olea-Calixto

Shot

PhD Candidate

Education

  • Ph.D. (in progress), History with an emphasis in Native American Studies
  • M.A., History, University of California, Davis
  • B.A., Chicana/o Studies (Highest Honors) & History, University of California, Los Angeles
  • A.A, Political Science, San Bernardino Valley College

About

Joel Daniel Olea-Calixto is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History with a Designated Emphasis in Native American Studies at UC Davis. He was born in Guerrero, Mexico, and has deep roots in Acapulco and Ixcateopan.  At a young age, he migrated from southern Mexico to San Bernardino, California, and became an undocumented subject. These experiences deeply inform his research on environmental history, displacement, and migration from Latin America to the U.S.

Joel's dissertation, "Elements of Poison: Mining, Air Pollution, and Disease Outbreaks Along the U.S.-Mexico Divide," is about the making of a transnational environmental disaster in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border through an investigation of air pollutants emitted by the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) smelter in El Paso from 1899 to 1999. ASARCO’s global operations around the world (Chile, Bolivia, Congo, Saudi Arabia, Peru, and Mexico) would process its North American minerals and ores in El Paso, which resulted in a surge of poisoned subsoils that contaminated crops, water systems, and the bodies of anyone who lived in proximity to the smelter. By asking how the ASARCO pollution problem was created and addressed by science, technology, environmentalists, and public health officials, his dissertation investigates the counter-history of a polluted border and how Indigenous and Latinx communities responded to ASARCO in the past and continue to navigate with the smelter's ghost today. This transnational disaster, created by a global mining company that closed its El Paso smelter operation at the end of the twentieth century, left a legacy of poisoned subsoils and lingering health effects that Latinx and Indigenous people continue to navigate and resist today.

Research Focus

  • Environmental History
  • History of Science and Medicine
  • Mining and Extraction in Latin America
  • U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
  • Chicanx and Latinx Studies
  • Hemispheric Indigenous Studies

Publications

  • "Conversation Piece: Bodies" with Lydia Tuan, Yale University, Routledge Handbook of Medical and Environmental Humanities, edited by Victoria Bates, Amber Abrams, and Rocío Gomez (London: Taylor and Francis). Under contract; anticipated publication date, 2026.
  • Olea-Calixto, Joel. “Review of Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Building an Industry around Immigrants by Melissa Villa-Nicholas.” Western Historical Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1093/whq/whae060
  • Eva Amarillas, Katy Maldonado, Joel Olea-Calixto, Julio Reyes, German Aguilar-Tinajero, and Yadira Valencia. "UndocuBruins: Critical Race Theory in the Forming of Resources for Undocumented Students.” Center for Critical Race Studies in Education at UCLA Research Briefs (2019)

Honors & Awards (Selected)

  • 2025 University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (Finalist)
  • 2025 Dibner Research Fellow in the History of Science and Technology, The Huntington Library
  • 2023-2024 Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Dissertation Innovation Fellowship
  • 2024 Newberry Consortium in American Indian and Indigenous Studies Summer Institute (NCAIS), Newberry Library
  • 2023 Humanities Program Graduate Summer Fellowship  
  • 2023 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (Honorable Mention)
  • 2022 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (Honorable Mention)
  • 2022 Hemispheric Institute on the Americas Summer Research Fellowship, UC Davis  
  • 2021-2022 Davis Humanities Institute HumArts Research Cluster Grant, UC Davis
  • 2021 Dean's Summer Graduate Fellowship, UC Davis
  • 2021 Mellon Research Initiative on Racial Capitalism Fellowship, UC Davis
  • 2020  Graduate Student Fellowship, American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE)
  • 2020 MCT Wakeham Fellowship, UC Davis
  • 2020 Hemispheric Institute on the Americas Language Study Award, UC Davis
  • 2019-2020 Provost Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, UC Davis