UA Conference Focuses on Latinos, Latinas in U.S. South

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama is hosting a national conference that will bring together activists and scholars to look at the lives of Latinas and Latinos in the southern United States.

“Latinas/os in the U.S. South: Immigration, Integration and Identity” will be held Friday, Feb. 19, at the Hotel Capstone on the UA campus.

UA’s department of American studies and Latino Studies, a Palgrave Macmillan journal based at John Jay College of the City University of New York, are collaborating on the conference. Work presented at the conference will publish in a special issue of the journal focusing on the South. The conference issue will begin a series of special issues of Latino Studies, on Latinos in U.S. regions, leading up to the 10th anniversary of the publication in 2013.

The conference is slated to run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Feb. 19. Welcoming comments are scheduled for 8:30 am to be followed immediately by the conference keynote speaker, Saket Soni.  Soni is the lead organizer of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice.

Topics for the conference include “Day Laboring in the Nuevo New South,” “El Nuevo Kentucky: Horse Industry Workers and New Latina/o Communities” and “The Emerging Second Generation in a New Destination in the U.S. South.” One panel, led by Latino community organizers from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, will focus on current issues and priorities within Southern Latino communities and how service providers can better reach the Latino community.  For details on the program for the conference, go to http://latinosouth.ua.edu.

Dr. Michael Innis-Jiménez, assistant professor of American studies, and Dr. Suzanne Oboler, professor of Latin American and Latina/Latino Studies at John Jay College, are the conference organizers. For more information, contact Innis-Jimenez at mdinnisjimenez@bama.ua.edu.

In addition to the UA department of American studies and Latino Studies, major conference sponsors include John Jay College, UA College of Arts and Sciences, and the UA Graduate School.

The American studies department is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.