CLS Program Faculty member Christopher Saldaña was honored this semester with a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Education. The fellowship supports early career scholars working in critical areas of education research. In addition to a monetary award, the fellowship will offer Prof. Saldaña to participate in professional development retreats with distinguished education …
CLS faculty member Marla Ramírez’s Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women who Endured Repatriation continues to win awards and inspire acclaim from many different corners. The book chronicles the expulsion of nearly one million people of Mexican descent between 1921 and 1944, more than 60 percent of whom were U.S. Citizens. Ramírez …
Marla A. Ramírez’s Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women who Endured Repatriation (Harvard University Press, 2025) continues to reach new audiences and win prestigious awards. Recently, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) recognized Banished Citizens with the Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women’s and Gender History, which honors path-breaking books that challenge and/or change …
Professor Diana Leon-Boys recently collaborated with Mattel/American Girl in the creation of Raquel Reyes, the 2026 American Girl of the Year. The doll is Mexican American, and the Mattel website describes her as “a paleta maker, pickleball player, dolphin saver, and dance-party DJ” and outlines an intriguing backstory. As part of the team of advisors, Prof. …
Professor Mariana Pacheco and two collaborators published “Re-imagining social futures: Bi/multilingual youths’ sociocritical literacies” in the July 2025 issue of the Journal of Literacy Research. The paper focuses on a summer writing program that Pacheco and her colleagues called GANAS (an acronym using a word that means “desire” or “motivation” in Spanish) for bi/multilingual youth, …
Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor Alfonso Morales has finished a successful run as chair of the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, but he’s not resting on his laurels. This semester, he has served on the program committee for the NSF funded 2025 Summit on AI leadership. He also made a presentation, and he was responsible …
In December of 2025, the Modern Language Association awarded its sixteenth Prize in United States Latina and Latina and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies to CLS Director Theresa Delgadillo for her 2024 book Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas. The Association’s press release notes that Geographies of Relation “masterfully combines …
Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor Theresa Delgadillo, who is also the Director of Chicanx/e and Latinx/e Studies, was recently interviewed about her latest book, Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the America, published by University of Michigan Press, for the international scholarly books podcast New Books Network. Professor Delgadillo was interviewed about her research by Shodona …
The open access academic journal, Latinx Talk, co-founded and co-edited by Professor Theresa Delgadillo, has been selected as part of the 2025-2028 cohort of the Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP) of the Lyrasis network. OACIP mobilizes a national and international consortium of academic and public libraries, academic departments, institutions, research centers, museums, and funding agencies to …
CLS Director Theresa Delgadillo has recently published Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas with the University of Michigan Press. The book crosses disciplinary and canonical borders to investigate the interrelationships of African-descended Latinx and mestizx peoples through an analysis of Latin American, Latinx, and African American literature, film, and performance. It offers a …