Larisa Veloz to lecture at UAH on March 8, for International Women’s Day

Larisa L. Veloz, a professor at The University of Texas at El Paso, will be the guest speaker for The University of Alabama in Huntsville’s (UAH) celebration of Women’s History Month in March.

Veloz will visit the UAH campus March 6-9. She will give a guest lecture in Dr. Nicole Pacino's Women and Gender in Latin America class on Mexican women migrants’ experiences on Wednesday, March 7. Pacino is an Assistant Professor at UAH.

Veloz’s public talk on Thursday, March 8, entitled "Even the Women are Leaving: Mexican Female and Family Migration in the Early Twentieth Century," is part of UAH’s celebration of International Women’s Day. The lecture is free and will begin at 5:30 p.m., in the Wilson Hall Theater (WIL 001). A reception will immediately follow the talk. Veloz’s visit to UAH is co-sponsored by the Department of History, Humanities Center, Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, Women's and Gender Studies, and Latin American Studies.

"I’m excited to have Dr. Veloz join us at UAH to share her expertise on immigration and women’s experiences, especially since both topics are exceptionally politically and culturally relevant at the moment. Her talk will also help demonstrate how the humanities in general, and historical research specifically, can shed light on issues of contemporary discussion and shape policy decisions. I look forward to the conversation," said Pacino.

An Assistant Professor of History at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), Veloz’s teaching and research focuses on the histories of Mexico, the United States, and Latin America. Specifically, she studies the movement of people across borders. As she states on her webpage, "I focus specifically on Mexican migration to and from the United States throughout the twentieth century. I examine how families lived in multiple landscapes and forged binational livelihoods."

"I’m also interested in the construction of real geographic borders as well as conceptual and cultural borders. Family, women and gender lay at the heart of my investigations, as I seek to illustrate how migrations impact, divide, and reconstitute families. I’m committed to bringing insights from my research to a wider audience, whether in the classroom or in the community," Veloz said.

Her goal is to show that migrants, sometimes at the margins of their countries and at the periphery of State visions, have a history of their own. "The history of migrants and migration across the United States-Mexico border and throughout the borderlands reveals insights about the relationship between migrants and their families, and States and their citizens," Veloz added.

Her most recent presentations include "Making a Mexican American Family," "A History of Families in Motion: Departures, Returns and Re-creations," and "Other Sides: Forgotten Histories of the U.S.-Mexico Border," (Podcast Episode 1 and 2)."

In addition, Veloz is the recipient of the prestigious 2017 Harold N. Glassman Award presented by Georgetown University’s (GU) Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for the most distinguished dissertation in the humanities. She received her undergraduate degree in History at The University of California, Davis. Veloz earned her Master’s degree in Latin American and Iberian Studies from The University of California, Santa Barbara, and a PhD in History from GU.

For more information about Veloz’s visit to the UAH campus, please contact Dr. Nicole Pacino at: Nicole.Pacino@uah.edu.

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