Staff

Arlene Torres is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Latina Latino Studies, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In January of 2004 she was appointed Director of the Latina and Latino Studies Program at UIUC. As a cultural anthropologist who focuses on the study of race and ethnicity, Torres has conducted research in the Anglophone and Hispanic Caribbean and in the U.S. Her most recent work focuses on the racialization of ethnic groups in museum settings. The work is titled, “Collecting Puerto Ricans” in Kevin Yelvington (ed.) Afro-Atlantic Dialogues: Anthropology in the Diaspora. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press (2004). Other published works include Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean. Volumes I & II. Edited with Norman E. Whitten Jr. (eds.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1998). As a public intellectual, Torres serves as a member of the Advisory Board and consultant to a national project on race, “Understanding Race and Human Variation: A Public Education Program” supported American Anthropological Association, the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

She is on administrative leave while she pursues ethnographic research on RACE and representation.

Alicia P. Rodriguez is the Associate Director of the Latina/Latino Studies Program. Prior to arriving at Latina/Latino Studies, she has worked in instructional design, intergroup relations, and international exchange. While in graduate school and as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, she conducted research on issues of cultural identity and multicultural education. She has published articles in journals, including Race, Gender, & Class, Educational Theory, and Cultural Studies:A Research Volume, and in edited volumes. She holds a Ph.D. in social foundations of education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.