This revised and updated fifth edition of "Immigrant America: A Portrait," by Drs. Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut, provides a comprehensive and current overview of immigration to the United States, including its history, the principal theories seeking to account for its diverse origins, the main types of immigrants, and the various forms of their incorporation within US society.

Jennifer White-Johnson is a disabled and Neurodivergent Afro-Latina art activist and design educator whose visual work aims to uplift disability justice narratives in design. Jen uses photography, zines, and collage art to explore the intersection of content and caregiving, emphasizing redesigning ableist visual culture. Jen has presented her disability justice activist work and collaborated with a number of brands and art spaces across print and digital such as Twitter, Target, Converse, and Apple. Her photo and design work has been featured in The Washington Post, AfroPunk, Art in America, Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation and is permanently archived in libraries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Museum of Women in the Arts in DC. and most recently acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2020 she was an honoree on the Diversability’s D-30 Disability Impact List. In 2021 she was listed as one of 20 Latino Artists to watch on Today.com Jen has an MFA in Graphic Design from The Maryland Institute College of Art. She was born in Washington D.C. and lives in Baltimore with her husband Kevin and 10-year-old son Knox.

Join the Center for Latinx Literature of the Americas in welcoming our guest speaker Jen White-Johnson This event is online via Zoom. Time and location TBD!

Jennifer White-Johnson is a disabled and Neurodivergent Afro-Latina art activist and design educator whose visual work aims to uplift disability justice narratives in design. Jen uses photography, zines, and collage art to explore the intersection of content and caregiving, emphasizing redesigning ableist visual culture. Jen has presented her disability justice activist work and collaborated with a number of brands and art spaces across print and digital such as Twitter, Target, Converse, and Apple. Her photo and design work has been featured in The Washington Post, AfroPunk, Art in America, Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation and is permanently archived in libraries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Museum of Women in the Arts in DC. and most recently acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2020 she was an honoree on the Diversability’s D-30 Disability Impact List. In 2021 she was listed as one of 20 Latino Artists to watch on Today.com Jen has an MFA in Graphic Design from The Maryland Institute College of Art. She was born in Washington D.C. and lives in Baltimore with her husband Kevin and 10-year-old son Knox.

Thursday, April 11th | 3:15 pm at the Latino Cultural Center

Friday, April 12th | 1:00-5:00 pm at The Institute for the Humanities

Join the Center for Latinx Literature of the Americas for our second spring gala event filled with workshops, panels, and readings. This year’s guests include:

Cecilia Vicuña is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Instan (2002), Cloud-Net (1999), Unravelling Words & the Weaving of Water (1992, translated by Eliot Weinberger and Suzanne Jill Levine), Precario/Precarious (1983), and SABORAMI (1973, reissued with an afterword by the author in 2011).

Giancarlo Huapaya is author of the books Estado y Contemplación/ Canción de Canción se Gana, Polisexual and Taller Sub Verso, and the editor of the anthology Pulenta Pool: Peruvian Poets in the United States (Hostos Review, 2017).

Susan Briante is the author most recently of Defacing the Monument, a series of essays on immigration, archives, aesthetics and the state. Briante is also the author of three books of poetry: Pioneers in the Study of Motion, Utopia Minus (an Academy of American Poets Notable Book of 2011) and The Market Wonders.

Farid Matuk is the author of the poetry collections This Isa Nice Neighborhood and The Real Horse, and of several chapbooks including My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta).

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera’s honors include being named Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, the Premio Nuevas Voces, and the inaugural Ambroggio Prize. He is author of lo terciario/ the tertiary (Noemi Press, 2019), while they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds LLC, 2019), and antes que isla es volcán/ before island is volcano (Beacon Press, 2022). Rivera will be joined by actor Aurelio Lima Davila.

We are especially honored to host artist, poet, and performer Cecilia Vicuña, who in the past few years has received a lifetime achievement award from the Venice Biennale, and had solo shows at the Guggenheim and Tate Museums. Our other esteemed guests include Roque Raquel Salas Rivera (Latino Book Award for poetry, and Puerto Rican Literature Project); Susan Briante (Poet, Essayist, Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism); Farid Matuk (Poet, Translator, Anna Rabinowitz Award); and Giancarlo Huapaya (Poet, Translator, Director, Cardboard House Press). 

Join us for an enlightening and empowering virtual symposium exploring the shared experiences of colonized peoples across the globe. At the edge of each other’s battles: Puerto Rican, Palestinian, Black, & Indigenous Futures convenes scholars, experts, and community activists to examine the impact of colonization, displacement, and oppression while seeking to foster deeper understanding, empathy, and solidarity on a collective journey towards liberation.

Thursday, April 11th | 3:15 pm at the Latino Cultural Center & Friday, April 12th | 1:00-5:00 pm at The Institute for the Humanities

Join the Center for Latinx Literature of the Americas for our second spring gala event filled with workshops, panels, and readings. This year’s guests include:

Cecilia Vicuña is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Instan (2002), Cloud-Net (1999), Unravelling Words & the Weaving of Water (1992, translated by Eliot Weinberger and Suzanne Jill Levine), Precario/Precarious (1983), and SABORAMI (1973, reissued with an afterword by the author in 2011).

Giancarlo Huapaya is author of the books Estado y Contemplación/ Canción de Canción se Gana, Polisexual and Taller Sub Verso, and the editor of the anthology Pulenta Pool: Peruvian Poets in the United States (Hostos Review, 2017).

Susan Briante is the author most recently of Defacing the Monument, a series of essays on immigration, archives, aesthetics and the state. Briante is also the author of three books of poetry: Pioneers in the Study of Motion, Utopia Minus (an Academy of American Poets Notable Book of 2011) and The Market Wonders.

Farid Matuk is the author of the poetry collections This Isa Nice Neighborhood and The Real Horse, and of several chapbooks including My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta).

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera’s honors include being named Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, the Premio Nuevas Voces, and the inaugural Ambroggio Prize. He is author of lo terciario/ the tertiary (Noemi Press, 2019), while they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds LLC, 2019), and antes que isla es volcán/ before island is volcano (Beacon Press, 2022). Rivera will be joined by actor Aurelio Lima Davila.

Dr. Wanda Alarcón (University of Arizona) is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in Chicana literature, music, and decolonial feminist thought. Her research investigates ways of listening to a field of multiple resistant sounds that signal the enduring presence of Mexican and Latinx communities in the U.S. that shape the contested soundscape of América. Her current book project, Chicana Soundscapes and the Decolonial Feminist Politics of Listening examines the writings of Chicana authors whose collective works amplify how we hear gender and jotería through 1980s East L.A. soundscapes.

Join curator, Carla Acevedo Yakes, and CENTRO Directora, Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, for a cafecito as they journey through entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico. Together, they’ll explore the intersection of art and activism, and unpack the myriad ways in which creative expression can shape narratives, challenge norms, and build bridges between communities.

Join us for a reading led by Program for Writers Dez Brown, as they read from their dissertation. They will be joined by Saretta Morgan and Patricia Killelea. 

Saretta Morgan is the author of Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024), and the chapbooks Feeling Upon Arrival (Ugly Duckling, 2018), and room for a counter interior (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2017).

Patricia Killelea is the author of two books of poems, most recently Counterglow (2018, Urban Farmhouse Press). Patricia also produces poetryfilms, which have been selected and screened at international film festivals.

Fields as different as art history, anthropology, literary criticism, philology, and law have developed ways of thinking about how cultural practices can be compared, but they have never pooled resources to discover what assumptions and strategies they might share. The study of art among indigenous cultures has been a platform where ideas of the local are strongly articulated. This is an informal, cross-disciplinary workshop that emerges from a group project to develop an alternative history of world art and considers how different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are thinking about comparativism.

Presenters will speak on art history (James Elkins and Ömür Harmanşah), comparative philology, comparative theology (Hugh Nicholson), comparative literature (Emily Apter), indigenous methodologies (Margaret Kovach), comparative legal studies (Tom Ginsburg), and cross-cultural aesthetics. The afternoon will be an open panel discussion. The day is formatted as short, informal talks (10 minutes), each followed by a brief response (5 minutes) and a longer discussion (30 minutes). Lunch is not provided. The conference will conclude with a general panel discussion. There will be pre-circulated papers to provide concrete reference points.

Raquel Gutiérrez's first book Brown Neon (Coffee House Press) was named as one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker and listed in The Best Art Books of 2022 by Hyperallergic. Brown Neon was a 2023 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize for Best Lesbian Biography/Memoir, a 2023 Finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firework Award in Creative Nonfiction and Recipient of The Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction.

Workshop and discussion of Professor Esther Díaz Martín's article: "The Schizophonic Realism of Mexican Narcocorridos".

Join Professor Laura Bravo, curator of Ida y vuelta for un cafecito exploring the origins and development of this exhibition.

Latinx Sound Cultures Studies working group hosts Vanessa Díaz and Petra Rivera Rideau with Cloe Gentile Reyes about all-things-Bad Bunny!

Hip-hop originated in African American and Puerto Rican low-income neighborhoods in the South Bronx and has grown to a global phenomenon. It's more than music, it's a cultural movement whose four pillars of DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti have generated numerous subcultures and developed lasting legacies.

Please join us for the English department's final colloquium of the semester, co-sponsored by the Center for Latinx Literature of the Americas and the Institute for the Humanities. Our guest speakers will include Eun-Jin Keish Kim and Juan Manuel Aldape Munoz, who will be presenting their work on undocumented documentaries before sitting down in conversation with UIC's own Dr. Esmerelda Arrizon-Palomera.

Join photographers Maximo Colón & Monica Félix as they explore their photographs on display as part of the exhibition, Ida y Vuelta: Experiencias de la migración en el arte puertorriqueño contemporáneo at the Hunter College East Harlem Gallery.

Jasminne Mendez is a Dominican-American poet, playwright, translator and award winning author of several books for children and adults.

The Freshwater Lab and the Great Cities Institute are co-hosting the Latino Environmental Justice Leadership Along Industrial Waterways event, featuring several prominent environmental justice leaders from Chicago and Joliet as event speakers. We would like to invite all who are interested to join us on November 7 to hear more from these speakers about environmental justice issues/actions in Chicago and the Greater Chicagoland Area. RSVP on the link below.

The Child Migration Across the Americas symposium aims to understand the past and present complexities of child migration on our continent. It will bring together UIC scholars, international researchers, activists, artists, and migrants. The event will feature a keynote by Reyna Grande, author of the bestselling memoir The Distance Between Us.

In this book, Dr. Marysol Quevedo maps the intellectual and artistic networks Cuban composers forged between 1940 and 1991 by exploring concerts, festivals, and recordings that shed light on how they negotiated aesthetic and political agendas at local and international levels. Beginning with the modernist neoclassicism of the Grupo de Renovación Musical in the 1940s and its Pan Americanist backdrop, the book moves through the more turbulent 1950s and the post-1959 revolutionary period.

"Blue Heart" is a science fiction feature film written and directed by Miguel Coyula, which tells the story of individuals genetically altered before birth with the aim of building the "new man" and saving the socialist utopia. Banned in Cuba, the film is about the individual's inability to escape his/her environment and the violent nature of a revolution and its consequences.

Join the UCR School of Education and Institute for Teacher of Color for this public virtual event with keynote speaker Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad, Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Illinois.

Join us in welcoming writer, Cristina Henríquez. She will be joined by Program for Writers graduate students, Mariana Delgado Hernandez and Eric Pahre.

Mínimo Gorki is about anti-Castro punk musician Gorki from the iconic band Porno Para Ricardo. It is the first installment of the documentary series Free art vs totalitarian censorship, by Cuban artist Lia Villares, which offers an intimate look at protesting artists in Cuba.

How did the Spanish-American War transform the United States and its newly acquired territories? This panel discussion gathers leading scholars to explore the far-reaching implications of the War of 1898 for Cuba as well as for the United States.