Dr. Mathew Sandoval

Mathew Sandoval is an associate teaching professor at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State, and Dean's Fellow for Access and Inclusive Excellence. He holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA, and he has spent twenty-five years as a performing artist and storyteller touring North America, South America, and Europe. The scholarship and the stage are not separate careers for him.

His work follows Día de los Muertos across borders: how a holiday moves through pop culture, mass media, tourism, cinema, and the gift aisle, and what it keeps or loses on the way. The National Endowment for the Humanities named him a Public Scholar and funded the book he is finishing, A Cultural History of Day of the Dead.

BringsWhat happens to a culture's rituals when the market discovers them, how grief is practiced in public, and why a celebration is a better teacher than a lecture.

FormatsKeynote, 45 to 60 minutes · Campus lecture · Workshop on cultural programming

Rooms leave withA room that understands why a celebration teaches what a lecture cannot.