Latin American and Latino Studies

Warm welcome to our new Business/Administrative Associate Ivan Raya.

Ivan Raya was born and raised on the far southeast side of Chicago and is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is a first-generation college student graduating from UIC with a Bachelor of Science in Integrated Health Studies and double major in Psychology in 2020. He then sought to continue his education by pursuing a master’s degree. In 2022, he graduated from UIC with a Master of Education in Urban Higher Education. Graduating with a masters has been an accomplishment of a lifetime that his family values dearly. All of this because he is the first in his family to graduate from high school, earn a bachelor’s and now a master’s degree. And now, he is striving to obtain a doctoral degree in higher education administration. During his free time, he enjoys reading, biking, and cooking. He loves to meal prep for the week with new recipes while keeping his Mexican cuisine in mind.

A warm welcome to our new Assistant Professor Barbara Sostaita.

Barbara Sostaita is a scholar of religion and global migration. She grew up undocumented in the south, the daughter of a minister who taught her how religion informs and shapes migrant-led organizing. Profesor Sostaita holds a PhD in Religious Studies with a Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently, she is completing a manuscript titled Sanctuary Everywhere, an ethnographic study of care practices in the Sonora-Arizona borderlands. This book and her other projects consider how people on the move–including migrants, artists, and organizers–engage with the sacred to cross and transgress borders. At UIC, she teaches courses on Latinx religions, transnational migration, and undocumented social movements.

Check out our Fall 2022 courses!

We are offering a number of exciting courses, including LALS 105 Intro to Nahua Studies. This is a brand new course taught by Prof. Cristían Roa. It surveys key aspects of Aztec (Nahua) society, culture, and language in the era before and during European colonization.

We also have a new faculty member, Prof. Barbara Sostaita, starting in the fall. She will be teaching LALS 286 Issues in Latino Identity, which will be focused on Latina/o religion, and LALS 385 Latino Social Movements in the United States, which will be focused on undocumented social movements.

The Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative ignites cross-institutional and cross-regional comparative research, training of doctoral students, and new scholarship in emerging areas of inquiry about Latinos. Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the initiative serves as the anchor of the consortium of R1 Hispanic Serving Institutions at the University of Illinois at Chicago. LALS faculty Maria de los Angeles Torres and Amalia Pallares are co-principal investigators on the grant.