National Hispanic Heritage Month 2023
As we wrap up National Hispanic Heritage Month, we
- Recognize our Hispanic, Chicanx, and Latinx students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community partners.
- Honor the scholarship, creative expression, and collaborations that originate from and engage with Chicanx and Latinx studies.
- Invite all members of our community to learn about this important work by reading these stories, taking classes, attending events, and more.
Community Engagement & Social Justice at the Heart
Meet some of the CLA scholars making a difference in the community.
"I’m most excited about joining such a vibrant department whose history is legendary, whose faculty and staff are passionate and committed to, as the CLS goals state, 'support and increase the presence of Chicanos and Latinos in the intellectual, political, and social professions, both within and beyond the Midwest,' which then 'promote cultural affirmation, social justice values, and community service.'”
Professor Amelia María de la Luz Montes, Chicano & Latino Studies
Professor Amelia María de la Luz Montes is the new chair of the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies.
Katie Groh de Aviña (BA ‘06, Chicano studies), 2022 Alumni of Notable Achievement Award winner, hopes to create “pathways to develop more Latinx educators and leaders” as executive director of El Colegio High School, a charter school in Minneapolis.
Assistant Professor Jessica Lopez Lyman discusses the connection of social justice with a “radical imagination” as a profound, responsive pathway toward equity, diversity, and inclusiveness in our communities.
Read & watch "Envisioning Social Justice with a 'Radical Imagination'"
Assistant Professor Aaron Alvarado studies universities to understand how they connect with our communities, land, and culture.
Read "Re-Encountering California: Aaron Alvarado Finds a New Home at the University of Minnesota"
A graduate student in the Department of Geography, Environment & Society, Mariana Peñaloza Morales' work focuses on her hometown. "I’ve started to describe my project as a love letter to the queer, Black and brown communities in Miami that raised me—taught me to live through and imagine beyond the end of the world."
Read "Mariana Peñaloza Morales Awarded the 2023 Jesús Estrada-Pérez Graduate Fellowship"
Celebrating the legacy of scholar and activist Jesús Estrada-Pérez, this fund provides fellowships for graduate students whose work engages some aspect of queer Latinx artistic production, cultural studies, social justice issues, and related interdisciplinary theories.
Critical Latinx Studies Cohort
Meet the American studies graduate students who are part of a new Critical Latinx studies cohort.
Gabi’s research interests lie in Latine identity formation, specifically analyzing the lived experiences of South American immigrants in the US. She strives to provide an intersectional analysis of the way in which South Americans form their identity in their countries of origin and investigate how their identity shifts after blending with their experiences within the US racial structures once they immigrate.
Maria wants to explore the socio-cultural dimensions of migration (including linguistic and cultural assimilation/acculturation patterns), persistence, resistance, and tension in immigrant communities across and between in a Minnesota-specific context.
David is a social-justice-oriented scholar and aspiring author. His research interests include immigrant rights activism, reproductive justice, critical race theory, critical counter-narratives, critical socio-historical archival analysis, and neocolonialism.
Hispanic Issues
A refereed scholarly series devoted to the study of Hispanic and Lusophone cultures—including literary criticism and historiography, Hispanic cultural studies, human rights, Hispanic linguistics, and other areas of inquiry. Each publication stresses collaborative research, drawing on a network of scholars from the United States and abroad.
Creative Approaches
Learn about a few of our interdisciplinary initiatives and the artist-scholars behind them.
"My art is part of my research. It’s an important strand of my research agenda because I think that creative expression really is the most accessible way for the public to understand radical imagination."
Assistant Professor Jessica Lopez Lyman, Chicano & Latino Studies
"With the [Artist in Residence] program, [the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies] is able to actualize the original vision of Chicana/o/x and Latinx studies as a truly interdisciplinary field and recognize the arts as a critical component of our interdisciplinarity."
Professor Karen Mary Davalos, Chicano & Latino Studies
The Department of Chicano and Latino Studies' Artist in Residence program invites local artist Patrick Blanchard to share his passion and culture with others through painting.
A poet and cultural anthropologist, Assistant Professor Gabriela Spears-Rico's first poetry collection, Deer Hide Elegies, pays homage to her Mexican farmworker community and Indigenous lineage and inspires resilience, renewal, and healing.
Minnesota is home to a talented group of Latinx photographers. This Liberal Arts Engagement Hub residency, led by Serpentina Arts, aims to put these artists' artwork and unique perspectives into conversation aims to put these artists' artwork and unique perspectives into conversation with one another through oral history interviews and the creation of a multimedia collection of their photographs, which will be shared through social media, live presentations, and exhibitions.
Learn more about Photography Narratives of MN Latinx Immigrants
Co-led by Professor Karen Mary Davlos, this online portal makes it easier to find and study Mexican American art, culture, and history.
¡Presente!: 50 Years of Chicano & Latino Studies
To commemorate its first fifty years, the department developed an exhibition called ¡Presente!: 50 Years of Chicano & Latino Studies in collaboration with Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) and the UMN Heritage Studies & Public History program.
Learn with us
Our classes are open to both degree-seeking and non-degree-seeking students.
1000-level
- AMST 1012: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens, and Exiles: The U.S. on an Immigrant Planet
- CHIC 1102 / 1102H: Latinos in the United States: Culture and Citizenship
- CHIC 1112: Paradigms in Chicana/o Studies
- ENGL 1301W: Introduction to Multicultural Literatures of the United States
- SPAN 1044: Intermediate Medical Spanish
3000-level
- CHIC 3223: Chicana/o and Latina/o Representation in Film
- CHIC 3374: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States: Families, Work, and Advocacy
- CHIC 3412: Comparative Indigenous Feminisms
- CHIC 3446 / HIST 3446: Chicana and Chicano History II: WWII, El Movimiento, and the New Millennium
- CHIC 3507W / ENGL 3507W: Introduction to Chicana/o Literature
- CHIC 3672: Chicana/o Experience in the Midwest
- CHIC 3888: Immigration and the U.S. Latina/o Experience: Diaspora, Identity, and Community
- CHIC 3896: Internship for Academic Credit
- CSCL 3141: Classics of World Literature
- CSCL 3211/ SCMC 3211: Global & Transnational Cinemas
- HIST 3429 / LAS 3429: Latin American History in Film and Text
- HIST 3886: The Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1765-1830
- LAS 3402W: Modern Latin America 1825 to Present
- SPAN 3015W: Spanish Composition and Communication
- SPAN 3104W: Introduction to the Study of Hispanic Literatures
- SPAN 3105W: Introduction to the Study of Hispanic Cultures
- SPAN 3107W: Introduction to the Study of Hispanic Linguistics
- SPAN 3222: Interpreting Modern and Contemporary Latin America
- SPAN 3401: Latino Immigration and Community Engagement
- SPAN 3403: Latino Immigration on US/Mexican Border
- SPAN 3404: Medical Spanish and Community Health Learning
- SPAN 3512: Modern Latin America
- SPAN 3705: Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish
- SPAN 3972W: Capstone Seminar
- SPPT 3601: "Race" in Brazil & Latin America
4000-level
- CHIC 4275: Theory in Action: Community Engagement in a Social Justice Framework
- CHIC 4401 / GWSS 4401: Chicana/Latina Cultural Studies
- CHIC 4901W: Senior Paper
- ECON 4311: Economy of Latin America
5000-level
8000-level
Resources
- National Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month Resources & News
- Resources for Latinx Students - Undergraduate Diversity, Community, & Belonging
- CASA SOL: An MCAE LLC for Latinx Students
- La Casa de Español: Language Learning LLC
- Pláticas: Latinx Connection Space, a virtual weekly group for Latina/e/o/x undergraduate and graduate students
- Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence (MCAE)
Department of Chicano & Latino Studies
Grounded in the legacy of the 1960s Chicano civil rights movement, the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies traces the intellectual contributions, cultural shifts, histories and political developments of people of Mexican and Latin American descent living in the United States.
Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies
Founded in the 1960s, the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies investigates and teaches the cultures of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds. By engaging the expressions of diverse communities, students gain linguistic, cultural, and analytical abilities that prepare them for many careers.
Department of American Studies
Approaching the study of US culture from a local, global, regional, and transnational perspective, the Department of American Studies' courses challenge students to examine issues from a variety of geographic scales and locations.
Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Learn about how the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies brings together faculty and students to pursue lines of inquiry that challenge systems of power and inequality, assert human dignity, and imagine social transformation.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Program
Situated CLA and with all CLA undergraduates eligible to join, the MLK Program specializes in serving students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or students of color (BIPOC).
Upcoming Events
Thinking about applying to the graduate program in Hispanic & Lusophone Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies? Meet with current students and faculty, attend a class, meet with campus affinity groups and offices, and learn how to craft a successful graduate school application.
Meet at Scott Hall at noon and process to the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub in Pillsbury Hall.
Learn more about celebrating Día de los Muertos with the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies
This 28-year-old project weaves a crosshatched path in multiple directions between performance art, theater, civil war narratives, cultural studies, human rights, and all manners of political activism across the globe. Struck by the Jewish Holocaust, other genocides and wars in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and by how visually rich those conflicts are, this project developed a methodology to record artistic and intellectual reactions to those human debacles and fractured memories, turning them into non-ephemeral resistance images, increasing the possibilities of an artistic language, and providing a fuller expression and understanding of complex human rights violations.
Self Help Graphics at Fifty celebrates the ongoing legacy of an institution that has had profound aesthetic, economic, and political impact on the formation of Chicanx and Latinx art in the United States.
The Department of Chicano & Latino Studies presents the 2023 Ramona Arreguin de Rosales Lecture, "Artivista: Music, Community, and Social Movement in East LA."
Learn more about An Evening with Martha Gonzalez
About the Ramona Arreguín de Rosales Lecture Series
This fund was created in honor of Ramona Arreguín de Rosales who helped lead the creation of the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies as a student 50 years ago. This fund supports an annual lecture by a scholar in the field of Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x Studies.
Make a gift to the Romana Arreguín de Rosales Lecture Series Fund
