The Chicanx/e & Latinx/e Studies Program is proud to announce its 2025-2026 speaker series, titled “Building Communities of Care and Resilience in Times of Crisis.” As the Program prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, it is organizing four panels about Latinx resistance to injustice. Speakers will examine the practices, histories, and social movements that cultivate care and resilience. The series explores not only exclusion and marginalization but also long histories of struggle for enduring change, freedom, and social justice, with a focus on alternative communities of care, alternative models of sociality, and innovative visions of relationality that emerge among Latinx communities in times of crisis and conflict. There will be ample opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and members of the community to exchange ideas with our presenters. The series is made possible by the Anonymous Fund and several campus partners. Panels will occur in-person with an option to participate by videochat.
Image: Graffiti on the U.S.-Mexico border wall between San Diego, CA and Tijuana, B.C., Photograph by Brooke Binkowski (2013), https://www.flickr.com/photos/brookebinkowski/10301801656/
Panel 3: Migration, Resilience, and Community Building in Times of Crisis
Thursday, February 19, 2026, 4:00 pm, Memorial Library 126
This panel focuses on migration and the resiliency of immigrants and displaced citizens as they navigate legal terrains, state bureaucracies, and a sense of belonging through community networks and placemaking. Want to attend virtually? Register online, and we’ll send you a link.
Stephanie Canizales
Position title: Assistant Professor, Sociology, UC Berkeley. Director, Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative
Speaker Bio: Stephanie L. Canizales, PhD, is a researcher, author, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative. Stephanie specializes in the study of international migration…
Gina Pérez
Position title: Professor, Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College
Gina Pérez is a cultural anthropologist and Professor and Chair of the Department of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College. She is the author of two award-winning books—The Near Northwest Side Story: Gender, Migration and…
Gilberto Rosas
Position title: Professor and Chair, Latina/Latino Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Gilberto Rosas is chair of the department of Latina/Latino studies and a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. With interests in “the state,” racism and its broad complexities, critical ethnography, and experimental writing,…
Panel 4: Gender, Care Networks, and Social Justice
Thursday, April 9, 2026, 4:00 pm, Memorial Library 126
This panel features the work of feminist scholars who examine how Latina women organize, collaborate, and engage in practices of care in their communities as they fight social inequalities in areas of reproductive justice, disability rights, and educationWant to attend virtually? Register online and we’ll send you a link.
Patricia Zavella
Position title: Professor Emeria, Latin American and Latino Studies, UC Santa Cruz
Patricia Zavella completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and is Professor Emerita of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received the American Anthropological…
María Elena Cepeda
Position title: Professor of Latinx Studies, Williams College, Williamstown, MA
María Elena Cepeda is Professor of Latinx Studies at Williams College, where she focuses on media and popular culture, language politics, and Latina/x feminist disability studies. Cepeda is a founding member of the…
Anna Ochoa-O'Leary
Position title: Professor and Department Head, Mexican American Studies, U Arizona
Anna Ochoa O’Leary (she, her, ella) is Professor and Head of the Mexican American Studies Department at the University of Arizona. Her current research and teaching interests has long focused on the undocumented immigrant experience,…
COMPLETED PANELS
Panel 1: Race, Immigration and Mass Removals
Tuesday, October 7, 2025, 4:00 pm, Memorial Library 126.
This panel explores the history of diverse immigrant communities in the United States, including Asian and Latinx/e experiences. The panelists provide a historical overview of immigration and exclusion across racial and ethnic lines. Combined, these presentations illuminate the drastic effects of immigration policies on historically marginalized communities. Despite their marginalization, as the panelists have shown, immigrant communities have created a sense of home in the United States and found creative ways to function as transnational families across national borders. Want to join the event remotely? Register online, and we’ll send you a link. Download Poster
Marla Ramírez
Position title: Assistant Professor, History and Chicanx/e & Latinx/e Studies, UW-Madison
Marla Ramírez is a historian of the US–Mexico borderlands. She investigates how processes of mass immigration removals have imposed notions of illegality on citizens in their own native countries. Specifically, she centers the everyday experiences…
Kevin R. Johnson
Position title: Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law, and Professor of Chicana/o Studies, UC Davis
Kevin R. Johnson is a Distinguished Professor of Law, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law. Johnson also has an appointment as Professor of Chicana/o Studies at UC…
Elliott Young
Position title: Professor of History, Lewis & Clark College
Elliott Young is Professor in the History Department at Lewis and Clark College. Professor Young is the author of Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the World’s Largest Immigrant Detention System (Oxford, 2021), Alien…
Panel 2: Cultivating Latine/x Resilience Amidst Challenging Conditions
Tuesday, November 4, 2025, 4:00 pm, Memorial Library 126.
This panel brings together scholars from literature, ethnic studies, and geography to examine how Latine/x communities have created communities of resistance within exclusionary conditions. The panelists examine how Latine/x resilience has allowed for the creation of creative and lucrative labor ventures, decolonial medicine and healing practices, and spaces of belonging within racial borderlands. Want to join the event remotely? Register online, and we’ll send you a link. Download Poster
Amanda Ellis
Amanda Ellis is an interdisciplinary researcher and assistant professor of Mexican American Literature and Culture. Her first book project draws from Chicana feminist theory to consider the literary history and significance of the figure of…
Lorena Muñoz
Lorena Muñoz is an urban/cultural geographer whose research focuses on the intersections of place, space, gender, sexuality, health and race. Her research includes exploring the experiences of urban migrant and immigrant laborers in the Global…
Gustavo Arellano
BIOGRAPHY Gustavo Arellano is author of Orange County: A Personal History and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and has been an essayist and reporter for…