Find your path in Latina/Latino Studies

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Activists marching in street

Intro Latina/Latino Studies

Interdisciplinary introduction to the basis for a Latina/Latino ethnicity in the United States.

LLS 100

Lords marching in the street

Puerto Rican Diaspora

This course will examine the social, political, and cultural history of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans across the diaspora, from 1898 to the present.

LLS 296

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Race, Gender and the Body

Focuses generally on the relation between power and the body. In western culture, the body is typically thought of as a natural, biological entity. However, as a number of social theorists have pointed out, the body can never be reduced to mere biology.

LLS 387

healthcare working tending to patient

Race, Medicine, and Society

The idea of race has historically been central to how Western cultures conceptualize and think about human difference. This course examines the historical significance of race through one domain of knowledge: medicine.

LLS 479

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Samantha Contreras

Alumni spotlight: Samantha M. Contreras, ’19 – Associate, Michael Best & Friedrich LLP

Samantha M. Contreras is an Illinois native, having grown up in Kankakee, Illinois, about an hour north of Urbana-Champaign. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences in the department of Latina/Latino Studies with high distinction and Communications. For her Senior Honor’s Thesis, she explored the effects of an ICE Detention Center in her hometown in a paper titled, “So Many Arms of the State”: Presence of an ICE Detention Center in a Midwestern Town and Latina/o Sense of Well-being. After completing her bachelor’s degree, she went on to earn her Juris Doctorate at...