Listening to LatinX

"Listening to LatinX" will explore new critical perspectives on Latino/a/X Studies from the field of Sound Studies. The study of sound and its connection to Latino/a/X communities is currently unfolding, and as the United States is home to approximately 55 million Spanish speakers, has some urgency. The symposium will illuminate how Latino/a/X communities construct themselves as well as how they are imagined--nationally, socially, and politically--through sound.

A keynote address will be provided by Maria Hinojosa, the anchor and executive producer of NPR's Latino USA, an influential platform for Latino/a/X voices and perspectives in the radio news landscape. The symposium panel will also include Professor Dolores Inés Casillas from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Professor Rosina Lozano of Princeton University. Professor Casillas's research centers on immigrant engagement with U.S. Spanish-language media. She is the author of Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-language Radio and Public Advocacy (New York University Press, 2014). Professor Lozano is a historian with a research and teaching focus on Mexican American history, the American West, migration and immigration, and comparative studies in race and ethnicity. She is the author of, An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (University of California Press, 2018.