Virginia Marie Raymond

Virginia Marie Raymond, April 27, 2007
Photograph by Dolores Carrillo García
Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Virginia Marie Raymond brings her background in community activism, law, and teaching to the Texas After Violence Project.

She is an alumna of Bryn Mawr College, Class of 1979, where she earned her A.B., and the University of Texas School of Law, where she earned in J.D. in 1985. In 2000, she began the graduate program in English at UT Austin, earning a M.A. (2003) and Ph.D. (2007). Through the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies at UT Austin, she earned a doctoral portfolio in cultural studies; through the Center for Mexican American Studies, she earned a doctoral portfolio in Mexican American Studies. Brian A. Bremen supervised her dissertation, Mexican Americans Write Toward Justice in Texas, 1973-1982, which examines Chicano struggles against state violence as expressed in cultural production, especially teatro and poetry; El Cuhamil, newspaper of the Texas Farm Workers Union (TFWU); and legal attempts to gain educational equity via the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause.

Her written work has been published in The Handbook of Texas Online and La Voz of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1957, the eldest of six children, Virginia has lived in Austin since 1982. Virginia Raymond and Thomas Kolker are the proud parents of a daughter and two sons. They are members of Congregation Agudas Achim (CAA) in Austin which, along with many other people in their large, loving and wise community, sustains and centers them.