Professor Vázquez' research and teaching interests range from contemporary graffiti and murals and the construction of spaces by US Latino/as, to the representation of national narratives in Mexico, Spain and the Caribbean.
Professor Velez is interested in the role that our social imaginaries play both in shaping and reimagining our ethical commitments, geopolitical responses to racialized and gendered colonial violence, as well as the politics of knowledge production.
Professor Vergara Bracamontes is a scholar of Latinx studies, critical prison studies, and queer of color critique who focuses on Latinx migration in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries.
During the summer of 2024, LLS major Alexa Rodriguez conducted research as a TRIO McNair Scholar. She wrote to us about her experience.
During the spring of 2024, LLS major Adriana Serrano Matsumoto was an intern for Senator Dick Durbin. She wrote to us about her experience.
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.
José A. de la Garza Valenzuela focuses on fiction by gay Chicano writers and his current research investigates the legal underpinnings of queer migrant narrative to shed light on experiences of migration and residence in the U.S. inaccessible through the state’s legal archive.
Nic Flores specializes in public and sexual health, HIV/AIDS prevention, ethnography, comparative ethnic and racial studies, and gender and sexuality studies with additional interests in queer of color critique, disability studies, and feminist science and technology studies.
During the summer of 2024, Trinity Mitchell, a Latina/Latino studies and history major worked for the Illinois Department of Human Services Asylum and Resettlement Team. She wrote to us about her experience.
During the summer of 2024, Graciela Best, a sophomore majoring in Latina/Latino studies and history, interned with the Chinese Historical Christian Database. She wrote to us about her experience.