UCLA Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies

Book Talk: How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America
2025-11-19 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Date: November 19, 2025
Time: 11:oo AM in Pacific Time
RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/bahai-moreno

How do schools make us think about race? And where does Latinx fit in? In “How Schools Make Race,” Laura Chávez-Moreno, a researcher and former public school teacher, shows how schools play a pivotal role in shaping the concept of race and racialized groups. In this talk, she tells the story of how the teachers and students in a racially diverse Spanish-English bilingual education program grappled with conflicting ideas about race and about the Latinx category. Chávez-Moreno challenges us to reconsider what makes race and invites us to see Latinx as a racialized group. Her research reveals why this shift matters-–because how we think about race affects whether our schools can provide youth with an education that challenges racist ideas.

SPEAKER:

Dr. Laura Chávez-Moreno
Assistant Professor, Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies, and Department of Education at UCLA

Laura Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning scholar, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and the Department of Education at UCLA. She is the author of How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America, published by Harvard Education Press, which won the Book of the Year Award by an early career scholar from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. Her book has been featured in several podcasts and popular media, including the New Books Network and Ms. Magazine. Professor Chávez-Moreno’s research has been published in top-tier academic journals and recognized with prestigious awards from organizations such as the American Educational Research 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. Most recently, Professor Chávez-Moreno was awarded the 2025 Emerging Scholars Award from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association. For more about her work, please check out her website LauraChavezMoreno.com

Professor Gaspar de Alba Retirement Symposium
2026-02-26 09:00 - 19:00 | Northwest Campus Auditorium, 350 De Neve Dr., Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1559, United States
RSVP Link
Please join us for a celebration of Profe Gaspar De Alba’s incredible career and lasting legacy at UCLA. Let’s celebrate her research and impact!
Hosted by the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities in partnership with the Dean of Social Sciences and the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, “Queering Sor Juana” will include two panels and a showcase performance of arias from the opera JUANA, which is based on Gaspar de Alba’s historical novel, Sor Juana’s Second Dream. The opera premiered with Opera UCLA in 2019, with two sold-out performances and a glowing review in The Los Angeles Times.
Free and open to the public, but all attendees must register online. Lunch and reception will be provided for the participants and first 50 registered guests only.
“Otro Corazón 3: Queering Sor Juana” builds on past symposia organized by Alicia Gaspar de Alba in her “Corazón” series,1 and is offered as part of a year-long celebration of her 32-year academic career at UCLA, focusing on her lifetime of research and creative engagement with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 17th-century Mexican nun/poet/scholar who is hailed all over the world as the “first feminist of the Americas” and the Mexican “Tenth Muse.”

CCAS 2026 Commencement
2026-06-13 10:00 - 12:00 | UCLA Sunset Village, Covel Commons
The faculty and staff of the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies look forward to celebrating our Class of 2026 Commencement, Doctoral Hooding Ceremony, and M.A. Commencement.
The Department Ceremony will be held on Saturday, June 13, 2026. Doors will open at 9:00 a.m., and the ceremony will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
More information coming soon!
