Gladney Lecture at UA Features Yale Human Rights Scholar

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Alicia Schmidt Camacho, the Sarai Ribicoff associate professor of American studies at Yale University, will present the Rose Gladney Lecture for Justice and Social Change at The University of Alabama on Thursday, Oct. 15, at 7:30 p.m. in 205 Gorgas Library.

The endowed lecture series honors retired UA faculty member Dr. Rose Gladney and is designed to focus on advocacy, justice and social change. Gladney worked tirelessly her entire career on behalf of both her students and social justice. She was fundamental in helping to craft the master’s degree program in women’s studies at UA, and was the recipient of the first Autherine Lucy Award for service, leadership and support for minority programming at UA in 1987.

A graduate of Columbia University, Schmidt Camacho earned her master’s and doctorate at Stanford University. She joined the Yale faculty in 1999 as a lecturer in the American studies program following a year-long residency at the Whitney Humanities Center. She was named an assistant professor in 2000. Since 2001, she has served three times as director of undergraduate studies for the Ethnicity, Race and Migration Program. She was the diversity liaison for graduate admissions in American studies from 2005-2006.

Schmidt Camacho’s research focuses on transnational migration, border governance, social movements in the Americas and the feminicide in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. She has published numerous articles about gender violence, migration, labor and human rights in the Mexico-U.S. border region.

Her book, “Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands,” examines the relationship between Mexican and Mexican-American expressive culture and the practices sustaining labor and social movements. She is working on a second book, “The Carceral Border: Social Violence and Governmentality at the U.S.-Mexican Frontier,” which addresses how the expansion of free-market capitalism on a global scale has transformed the mobility of people, culture and capital to and across the U.S.-Mexican frontier.

Schmidt Camacho is a council member of the Women’s Faculty Forum. At Yale’s 2007 commencement, she was honored with the Sarai Ribicoff Award for the Encouragement of Teaching in Yale College. Her award citation praised her for incorporating literature, the visual arts, music, film, theater, historical documents and personal testimony in her classes.

Since 2003, she has been a member of a bi-national consortium of feminist scholars and activists working to document and contest the murders of poor girls and women in the border state of Chihuahua, Mexico. She has written extensively on the human rights violations and gender violence that include the feminicides of an estimated 480 girls and women in Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez. Her articles on the feminicide have been published in journals and books both in Mexico and the United States. She has also spoken on the topic internationally.

A book signing and reception will follow the lecture. This event is free and open to the public.

The event is co-sponsored by University Libraries, the College of Arts and Sciences, the African-American studies program, New College, and the departments of American studies, history and women’s studies.