Latinx Studies Matter: Programming in Times of Crisis

U.S. Latino/a Studies Faculty Lecture Series, Spring 2021

Event Recording: https://iastate.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=1c4e7f04-1814-47ab-bf63-acbe011cd4b0

With few exceptions, Latina/o/x Studies Programs and Departments are the result of crises. While many collections exist of Latina/o/x studies as a field and excellent cultural and historical studies make visible Latinx lives throughout the country, focus on the process of building Latino/a/x programming in official college and university sites is absent from our academic and community archives.

This talk introduces the special issue, Latina/o/x Studies Matter: Case Studies from the Midwest, which is in the works with Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Journal Center for Latino Research, DePaul University, Chicago. Expanding on numerous, previous conversations had over the years at national and regional conferences, and welcoming a greater chorus of voices throughout the Midwest, this special issue gathers the narrative histories of 10 Midwest Latina/o/x sites, documented by directors and chairs who reflect on their particular institutional trajectories. The historical narratives and interviews included in this special issue prove that Latina/o/x studies create safe spaces for reflective thinking, and open pathways for critical and collaborative engagement that stretch beyond the confines of the traditional academic model. I examine how the issues that shaped the field of Latina/o/x Studies during its founding years continue to be urgent today, in times of crises, which disproportionately afflict black and brown populations.

Lucía M. Suárez is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latinx Studies with the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University, where she is also the director of the US Latino/a Studies Program and affiliate faculty with the Women and Gender Studies Program. She is the author of The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory (Florida University Press, 2006); co-editor, of The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World (Palgrave McMillan, 2008) with Ruth Behar; and Dancing Bahia: Essays on Afro-Bahian Dance, Education and Memory (Intellect UK/University of Chicago Press, US, 2018), an international collaboration with Amélia Conrado and Yvonne Daniel; and guest editor for the special issue Latina/o/x Studies Matter: Case Studies from the Midwest (forthcoming with Diálogo).