Director's Welcome

¡Bienvenidos! Welcome! Founded in 1996, the Latina/Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is now one of the nation’s exemplary interdisciplinary programs in the field of U.S. ethnic and race studies. Our internationally recognized faculty spans the fields of queer and sexuality studies, education, literature, history, media studies, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, and health policy, among many others. The program currently offers more than 30 undergraduate and graduate courses per year, houses two post-doctoral fellowships, and organizes a national biannual conference featuring graduate student work. Together our students and faculty are re-imagining the frontiers of Latina/o Studies with their comparative work on diverse Latina/o communities and cutting-edge scholarship on immigration, citizenship, social movements, contemporary media, literature and cinema. As Interim Director for 2007-2008, I invite you to explore our website, attend our colloquia, and engage our faculty, students and courses.

Upcoming Events:

When: 4:00 pm, Thursday, April 24, 2008
Where: Illini Union Bookstore, Second Floor
The Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Jr. Lecture Series
"Writing Latino/a Lives: A Conversation with Helena Maria Viramontes and Manuel Munoz"
Helena María Viramontes is an award-winning writer and professor of creative writing at Cornell University. Manuel Munoz was born to Mexican farmworkers in Dinuba, California in the Central Valley. Most of his work centers on the lives of Mexicans in the Central Valley. Manuel Muñoz is the author of two collections of short stories.

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