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Professor Mirelsie Velázquez receives Campus Research Board Grant
The Department of Latina/Latino Studies is pleased to announce that professor Mirelsie Velázquez received a Campus Research Board grant from Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation. The grant will fund her...
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New book by professor Aja Y. Martinez recounts history of critical race theory
A new book by rhetoric and history scholars examines the origins of critical race theory in legal studies. The movement is an area of legal scholarship that seeks to understand the relationship between race and racism and the law and other societal institutions in the U.S., the authors said. It is...
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Professor Velázquez awarded Campus Fellowship from Humanities Research Institute
The Department of Latina/Latino Studies is pleased to announce that professor Mirelsie Velázquez has been awarded a 2025-26 Campus Fellowship from the Humanities Research Institute for her project “Genealogies of Empowerment and the Makings of Home: Latina/o Activism at the...
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Professor Aja Y. Martinez joins the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois
This spring, the Department of Latina/Latino Studies is excited to welcome professor Aja Y. Martinez as an associate professor. She is a critical race theory scholar and storyteller and author of the multi-award-winning book ...
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Humanities Research Lab courses provide community based research education: Spotlight on LLS affiliate professor Yuridia Ramírez' oral history methods class
As an oral historian, Illinois history professor, Yuridia “Yuri” Ramírez records the stories of people who have never been written about in history books. “These...
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Sabbatical spotlight: Associate dean Isabel Molina-Guzmán’s work on Afro-Latinidad in digital spaces and Hollywood reboots
For most academics, sabbatical is a crucial time to focus on your research and a break from teaching duties. For administrators it’s especially essential, because their duties often leave little time to devote to their scholarship. For Isabel Molina-Guzmán, associate dean for student academic...
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Narratives of law: Professor José A. de la Garza Valenzuela explores queer Chicano citizenship through the law and literature
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...
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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 professor Gilberto Rosas’s book Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border has received an honorable mention...
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LLS faculty, affiliates, and graduate minors ranked as excellent for spring 2024 semester
The Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning has released the list of teachers who were ranked as excellent by their students during the spring 2024 semester and many Latina/Latino studies faculty, affiliates, and graduate minors were included on the list. These lists are compiled each...
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How have U.S. border policies affected attitudes toward migrants and violence against them? Interview with professor Gilberto Rosas
On Aug. 3, 2019, a shooter killed 23 people and injured two dozen more in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart. The gunman, who posted an anti-immigration manifesto online before the shooting, targeted Latinos. He was convicted of federal hate crimes. ...