Pearls of Wisdom – Luis F. Fernandez

Luis F. Fernandez has over 10 years of experience in researching, producing studies, and understanding local, state and national history. His undergraduate research centered on understanding the history of land grants in California, culminating with his unpublished work, “Revisiting the Past, Uncovering the Present: An Introduction to Orange County Ranchos.” Most recently, he is an adjunct faculty at the Department of History at Santa Ana College. In that role, he lectures on Mexican, American and California History. Previously, he was an assistant curator and consultant for museum exhibitions, “A Class Action: The Grassroots Struggle for School Desegregation in California,” a national winner of the 2013 Award of Merit by the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), and “Intolerance Versus Freedom.” Prior to that, he was an assistant archivist for the Santa Ana History Room, where he successfully led the acquisition of over 2,000 photographs and led the digitalization process that is known as the Agnes Soto Collection.

Fernandez is the co-author of three academic works: “Mexican American Baseball in Orange County,” “Doss v. Bernal: Ending Mexican Apartheid in Orange County” and “Paul P. Duron: Design and Manufacture of Cryogenic Industrial Pumps and Systems and a Description of the Logan Barrio, Santa Ana, California.” Due to his success in local historical research, he was named “Best Local Historian of 2012” by the OC Weekly. His historical research has been featured in Univision Noticias 34, StoryCorps, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Chicano Studies Research Center, the OC Weekly, and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Fernandez earned a Master of Arts in history from California State University, Fullerton with a concentration in areas of nationalism, nation building and national identity formation in European nations, and comparative race relations in 20th Century United States. From California State University, Fullerton, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature with an emphasis in modern and contemporary American and British Literature in the 19th and 20th Century and a Bachelor of Arts in Chicana/o studies: an interdisciplinary survey of Chicana/o society from a sociological, economic, political, philosophical and cultural perspective from pre-Columbian civilizations to contemporary society.