Faculty Publications
Our award-winning faculty study labor, geography, sociology, history, and more. We are leading conversations on history, migration, and cultural expression in Wisconsin and beyond.
Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation
Marla A. Ramírez
From 1921 to 1944, approximately one million ethnic Mexicans living in the United States were removed across the border to Mexico. What officials called “repatriation” was in fact banishment: 60 percent of those expelled were US citizens, mainly working-class women and children whose husbands and fathers were Mexican immigrants. Drawing on oral histories, transnational archival sources, and private collections, Marla A. Ramírez illuminates the lasting effects of coerced mass removal on three generations of ethnic Mexicans.
The Latino Question: Politics, Labouring Classes and the Next Left
Armando Ibarra, Alfredo Carlos and Rodolfo D Torres
While so many Latino/Chicano Americans struggle in pursuit of the ‘American dream’, while figures such as Donald Trump are accepted in mainstream politics, and scaremongering and paranoia is rife, the need for a vivid, empirically grounded study on Latino politics, culture and society has never been greater.
The Latino Question fulfils this need, offering a cutting-edge analysis of the transformative nature of Latino politics in the US. In a radical alternative to dominant ideas, the authors emphasise the importance of political economy for understanding Latino politics, culture and social issues. It draws from original research and a number of critical traditions including the thought of Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci, to understand the politics of race and ethnicity in a modern capitalist society.
Including case studies of how Latino/Chicano communities across the US are not only resisting, but also reinventing and transforming ethnic politics in the age of neoliberalism, this book is required reading for all those hoping to understand the ‘Latino question’ in contemporary America.
Puerto Rico: A National History
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo
Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago’s people while offering a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting them today.
In this masterful work of scholarship, Meléndez-Badillo sheds light on the vibrant cultures of the archipelago in the centuries before the arrival of Columbus and captures the full sweep of Puerto Rico’s turbulent history in the centuries that followed, from the first indigenous insurrection against colonial rule in 1511—led by the powerful chieftain Agüeybaná II—to the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1952. He deftly portrays the contemporary period and the intertwined though unequal histories of the archipelago and the continental United States.
The Politics of Patronage: Lawyers, Philanthropy, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Founded in 1968, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is the Latino equivalent to the NAACP: a source of legal defense for the Latina/o community in cases centered on education, state immigration laws, redistricting, employment discrimination, and immigrant rights. Unlike the NAACP, however, MALDEF was founded by Mexican American activists in conjunction with the larger philanthropic structure of the Ford Foundation—a relationship that has opened it up to controversy and criticism.
In the first book to examine this little-known but highly influential organization, Benjamin Márquez explores MALDEF’s history and shows how it has thrived and served as a voice for the Latina/o community throughout its sixty years of operation. But he also looks closely at large-scale investments of the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and others, considering how their ties to MALDEF have influenced Mexican American and Latinx politics. Its story crafted from copious research into MALDEF and its benefactors, this book brings to light the influence of outside funding on the articulation of minority identities and the problems that come with creating change through institutional means.
Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest
Theresa Delgadillo, Ramon H. Rivera-Servera, Geraldo L. Cadava, and Claire F. Fox
Latina/o/x places exist as both tangible physical phenomena and gatherings created and maintained by creative cultural practices. In this collection, an interdisciplinary group of contributors critically examines the many ways that varied Latina/o/x communities cohere through cultural expression. Authors consider how our embodied experiences of place, together with our histories and knowledge, inform our imagination and reimagination of our surroundings in acts of placemaking. This placemaking often considers environmental sustainability as it helps to sustain communities in the face of xenophobia and racism through cultural expression ranging from festivals to zines to sanctuary movements. It emerges not only in specific locations but as movement within and between sites; not only as part of a built environment, but also as an aesthetic practice; and not only because of efforts by cultural, political, and institutional leaders, but through mass media and countless human interactions.
A rare and crucial perspective on Latina/o/x people in the Midwest, Building Sustainable Worlds reveals how expressive culture contributes to, and sustains, a sense of place in an uncertain era.
Perros habitados por las voces del desierto
El infrarrealismo mexicano va más allá de lo que podamos decir en estas líneas, que como marcas de la gran carretera rumbo a la nada y al infinito, intenta acotar una emoción tremenda, la de acompañar esta edición en España de los Perros habitados por las voces del desierto. Poesía infrarrealista entre dos siglos (2014, 2016); la antología de referencia del infrarrealismo. Un documento histórico, que es testimonio y testamento del último gran movimiento de neovanguardia del siglo XX. Movimiento que en el inminente 2025, cumplirá su 50 aniversario. Y claro que estamos de fiesta.
Read more:
Find the most up-to-date and comprehensive list of faculty publications in each Chicanx/e and Latinx/e Studies scholar’s profile.