Find your path in Latina/Latino Studies
- As a unit committed to social justice and deeply invested in a rich tradition of social critique, the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois condemns the offensive comments about Latinos, Black Americans, and Jewish Americans, as well as the misogyny, exhibited at a recent campaign event for Donald Trump. From reproducing tropes of Latina hyper-sexuality rife with anti-immigrant subtext, to maligning Puerto Rico, ... Read full story Statement on Hate Speech
- 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
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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.
Upcoming events
Alumni spotlight: Juan Mora, PhD, '13 - Assistant Professor, Department of History and Latino Studies Program, Indiana University, Bloomington
Juan Mora, PhD, earned his BA in History and Latina/Latino Studies in 2013. He arrived at UIUC as an undergraduate majoring in History. For his first two years at Illinois, he struggled to find the specific areas of studying history that could encourage him to succeed. As he explained, “It was when I combined Latina/o Studies with History that I was able to thrive.” Courses with Dr. Adrian Burgos Jr. and Dr. Mireya Loza, like Caribbean Latina/o Migration and Latino Social Movements, respectively, were instrumental to his development as a student and shaped his decision to eventually major in...
Faculty spotlight: Mirelsie Velázquez
Mirelsie Velázquez is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work centers history of education, women's history, Puerto Rican studies, gender and sexuality, and teacher education.