The Visiting Scholars Speaker Series will host Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno for a special talk on "How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America." The talk will be held in 355–56 Stiteler. Lunch will be provided.
About the Speaker
Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning scholar, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor in the Departments of Chicana/o &
Central American Studies and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Chávez-Moreno works at the intersections of education, pedagogy, language, literacy, and ethnic studies, particularly Chicanx/Latinx Studies. Her research has been published in top-tier academic journals and recognized with prestigious awards from organizations such as the American Educational Research Association, the Critical Race Studies in Education Association, and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. In 2023, she received the Alan C. Purves Award from the National Council of Teachers of English for her article, “The continuum of racial literacies: Teacher practices countering whitestream bilingual education,” published in Research in the Teaching of English. This annual award honors the article deemed most significant in advancing the field.
Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s book, How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America, published by Harvard Education Press, won the 2025 American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Early Career Book of the Year Award and a 2025 American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Book Award. The book also has been featured on many podcasts and in popular media, including Forbes, Ms. Magazine, and Latinx Talk. Read more about Dr. Chávez-Moreno.
About This Year's Series
The theme of this year's series is Punishment and Education. Schools and other educational spaces rely on myriad modes of punishment to establish restrictive institutional cultures and deter individual and collective acts of resistance. As the stakes for noncompliance intensify under increasingly authoritarian state legislatures, university boards of directors, and federal agencies, how can we make sense of—and perhaps push back against—the evolving landscape of punishment in K-12 schools and higher education?