Find your path in Latina/Latino Studies
Latine Studies Graduate Student Conference
Reclaiming Insurgency
October 25, 2024 9:00AM-6:30PM
Levis Faculty Center
- What can literature tell us about how people experience the law and how is the law like literature? Professor José A. de la Garza Valenzuela has been writing a book, "Queer in a Legal Sense: Brown Citizenship and Other Lawful Fictions," that centers these questions to understand what books tell us about the world we legally occupy, and how legal texts, and their interpreters, use storytelling to enforce and create laws. Read full story Narratives of law: Professor José A. de la Garza Valenzuela explores queer Chicano citizenship through the law and literature
- The Department of Latina/Latino Studies is proud to announce that professor Gilberto Rosas’s book Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border has received an honorable mention for the 2024 American Ethnological Society Senior Book Prize. The prize recognizes work that is deeply ethnographic and speaks to contemporary social... Read full story Professor Gilberto Rosas’ book "Unsettling" receives honorable mention for 2024 American Ethnological Society Senior Book Prize
- The Department of Latina/Latino Studies is proud to announce that affiliate professor Mónica García Blizzard’s book, The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age, has received an Honorable Mention from the 2024 International Latino Book Awards. Professor García Blizzard is an associate professor of Spanish and... Read full story LLS affiliate professor Mónica García Blizzard’s book “The White Indians of Mexican Cinema” receives Honorable Mention from International Latino Book Awards
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Why Study Latina/Latino Studies?
Professor Mirelsie Velázquez shares the value of the major, favorite spots in Champaign-Urbana, and why the Latina/Latino studies department is the best kept secret on campus in an interview with the College of LAS.
Intro Latina/Latino Studies
Interdisciplinary introduction to the basis for a Latina/Latino ethnicity in the United States.
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.
Latina/o Migration
Topics discussed include the history of international migration to the United States, the relationship between history and the contemporary context, the development of U.S. immigration policy, the incorporation of Latino immigrants in U.S. society, and immigrant and community responses to migration.
Mexican-American History
Examination of the history of Mexican Americans living within the United States from the Spanish Conquest to the twentieth century. Explores the process of migration, settlement, assimilation, and discrimination with emphasis on continuity and change in Mexican cultural development.
Latina/o Popular Culture
Provides an introduction to Latina/o popular culture in the United States. Specific modes of popular culture might include mass media, music, film, video, performance, and other expressive forms.
Chicana/Latina Autobiography, Memoir, Testimonio
Focuses on how Chicanas/Latinas describe their own experiences and how they both understand and negotiate their sense of self, and centers on the new crop of memoir and autobiography, as represented in the most recent texts by well-established Chicana writers, such as Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldúa and Ana Castillo.
Upcoming events
Alumni spotlight: Nancy Cambron Perez, '12, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Manager, Teladoc Health
Nancy Cambron Perez earned her BA in Latina/Latino Studies and Sociology from UIUC in 2012. Reflecting on her decision to major in Latina/Latino Studies, she explained, “I was passionate about understanding the diverse history, culture, and experiences of the Latinx community.” She also credits her interaction with LLS faculty in shaping her decision to major in Latina/Latino Studies, noting, “Meeting and connecting with faculty members Isabel Molina-Guzmán, Julie A. Dowling, Jonathan Xavier Inda, and Mirelsie Velázquez shaped my decision to major in LLS. They made me feel like I could make...
Faculty spotlight: Janett Barragán Miranda
Janett Barragán Miranda is currently working on her book manuscript tentatively titled, "Hungering for Equality: Mexican and Mexican Americans from Post WWII To Civil Rights," a monograph about the community of Mexican origin and their struggle for food justice in the 1960s.