Tijerina Revilla, Anita, 1973-

Dr. Anita Tijerina Revilla is an associate professor for the College of Liberal Arts in the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies. She is a Queer Chicana scholar whose work has focused on student activism, Chicana feminism, joteria, and the Latinx educational pipeline.

Anita was born and raised outside of San Antonio, Texas on a ranch with her two siblings. After her father, Luis Arce Revilla's death, Anita and her family moved to San Antonio where her mother, Delia, took on the role of matriarch and served as a security guard. Anita credits much of her success to her mother's support and unrelenting efforts for assuring that she had access to the resources that she needed and eventually, encouraged her to pursue a college education. She attended Princeton University, received her master’s degree from Columbia University, and obtained her doctorate from UCLA.

While at Princeton, Dr. Revilla's critical consciousness began to develop and her passion for social justice was born. Later as a doctoral student at UCLA, her adviser and Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholar, Dr. Daniel Solorzano, inspired in her a pedagogical approach to teaching that centers her positionality and Chicana feminist perspective.

When Dr. Revilla first arrived in Las Vegas, she realized that there were not many Latinx faculty at UNLV. Despite this, she discovered an active and vocal Latinx student population that encouraged her to move here and make UNLV her academic home. She is a key figure in Las Vegas’ Latinx and Queer community, an advocate for social justice, equity, and disrupting oppressive systems to increase educational access for students.

In 2006, she played a key role in organizing and documenting the Mayday March, Las Vegas' largest Latinx-centered protest and preserved many interviews of participants. The protest would lead to the creation of the Office of Student Diversity and Services at UNLV. She regularly serves as an adviser to several UNLV organizations and diversity committees on campus. Currently, she teaches courses that challenge racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia to create a more socially conscious and just world.