New Books in Latino Studies

Marshall Poe

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

  1. Jun 11

    Sarah McNamara, "Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South" (UNC Press, 2023)

    Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries who sought refuge against the shifting tides of international political turmoil during the early half of the twentieth century.In Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Historian Sarah McNamara tells the story of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinas/os who organized strikes, marched against fascism, and criticized U.S. foreign policy. While many members of the immigrant generation maintained their dedication to progressive ideals for years to come, those who came of age in the wake of World War II distanced themselves from leftist politics amidst the Red Scare and the wrecking ball of urban renewal. This portrait of the political shifts that defined Ybor City highlights the underexplored role of women’s leadership within movements for social and economic justice as it illustrates how people, places, and politics become who and what they are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

    1h 20m

  2. Jun 10

    Michael Staudenmaier, "White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago" (UNC Press, 2026)

    Independent historian Michael Staudenmaier joins Michael Stauch to discuss his new book about “becoming Puerto Rican” in Chicago. Staudenmaier’s book, White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), describes how generations of Puerto Rican organizers and activists, facing persistent exploitation, discrimination, and marginalization in the postwar United States, drew on competing versions of nationalism to challenge the racial order in one of America’s most segregated cities. Highlights include: A description of the historical process of “becoming Puerto Rican” as a racial project; How class differences between activists and ordinary Puerto Ricans shaped distinct experiences of “becoming Puerto Rican”; How the gendered experience of migration led one woman to collaborate with the FBI; The effect of the 1966 Division Street Riot on Puerto Rican identity; The rise of “panethnic Latinidad” and its possible futures. Michael Staudenmaier is an independent historian and serves on the Board of Directors of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School in Chicago. Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

    59 min

  3. May 24

    Shane Breaux, "Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns" (Routledge, 2026)

    Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Shane Breaux examines musical variety clowns and the broad array of racial and ethnic impersonations they performed on four distinct touring circuits and apparatuses: the African American Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA), the Chinese American so-called Chop Suey Circuit, the Mexican and Mexican American carpas tours, and Country American barn dances. This book explores the overlooked history of touring clown performers in early twentieth-century musical variety shows, addressing both their historical marginalization and their significant impact on popular entertainment. By examining these performers' widespread presences both on and off stage, the work challenges traditional historical narratives that have excluded diverse voices, particularly women and non-white performers. The research corrects a common misconception that racial impersonation in musical variety was exclusively the domain of white male performers. Instead, it reveals how performers and managers from various backgrounds actively challenged prevailing ideas about American identity, whiteness, and cultural inclusion. Through this lens, the book demonstrates that musical comedy performance and management were not exclusively white privileges, but rather spaces where diverse artists contributed significantly to early twentieth-century entertainment culture and beyond. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

    41 min

  4. May 12

    Rachel Grace Newman, "The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite" (U California Press, 2026)

    The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite (U California Press, 2026), by Dr. Rachel Grace Newman is a deep history of the politics of foreign education in Mexico, where many influential figures have degrees from European or US institutions. Reconstructing the history of student mobility from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Dr. Newman unveils the social hierarchies, political languages, and institutional mechanisms that created Mexico’s foreign-educated elite. Study abroad began as a private phenomenon for young elites to acquire specific forms of knowledge and to preserve their status. But after the 1910 revolution, elites gradually convinced the Mexican state, under the guise of modernizing the nation, to underwrite their ambitions with merit-based scholarships. Student mobility naturalized the expectation that Mexico’s sovereignty and development required knowledge from elsewhere. For historians of Mexico and other countries with foreign-educated elites, this open-access book reveals the subtle, insidious processes by which states reinforce privilege through education policy. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

    4 min

  5. May 3

    Arely M. Zimmerman, "Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

    Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders (U Arizona Press, 2026) reshapes how we understand belonging, identity, and political participation in the context of migration. Drawing on decades of Salvadoran activism from the 1980s solidarity movement to the post–civil war era, Arely M. Zimmerman offers a powerful ethnographic account of how migrants challenge exclusionary state practices and redefine citizenship on their own terms using transnational networks and revolutionary politics that transcend borders.Drawing on nearly fifty interviews with activists who fled El Salvador, Zimmerman traces how political refugees carried with them strategies of resistance and community organizing that shaped social justice movements in the United States. The book addresses the political turmoil and grassroots mobilizations in El Salvador, the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, contemporary activism, and the impact of women’s strategies and forms of resistance.Essential reading for scholars and students of migration, Central American studies, and political movements, Contentious Citizenship is a bold intervention into contemporary debates on identity, legality, and resistance. Zimmerman’s work honors the ingenuity and resilience of Salvadoran activists and invites readers to consider what it means to belong. This interview was conducted by Mary Reynolds, publicity manager for the University of Arizona Press. Her book, The Quake That Drained the Desert (forthcoming in 2026) investigates the 1887 borderlands earthquake that changed surface water and groundwater in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

    23 min

  6. Apr 29

    Elena Foulis, "Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences" (Ohio State UP, 2026)

    In Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences (Ohio State UP, 2026), Elena Foulis offers a practical guide for completing ethical fieldwork in Latina/o/e communities, emphasizing equitable and culturally sustaining practices for gathering oral histories. In her critical decolonial model, Foulis centers the agency of the people within these communities while considering the diversity and complexity of their experiences. In doing so, she advocates for the importance of building oral history archives that challenge our understandings of Latina/o/e peoples. Foulis provides a conceptual framework for building on community knowledge that considers language, cultural practices, gender, and race. She suggests ways to involve students in ethical research; collect evolving oral histories; employ a language justice approach that acknowledges linguistic oppression, translanguaging, and bilingualism as essential aspects of this community; and consider the importance of digital archives for the creation of multimedia projects that foster community pláticas. Grounded in both theoretical approaches and a feminist ethics praxis, Embodied Encuentros ultimately outlines an important model for doing collaborative, ethical research—not only within Latina/o/e communities but within other minoritized communities as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

    58 min

  7. Apr 14

    David-James Gonzales, "Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California" (Oxford UP, 2025)

    On March 2, 1945, five Mexican American families and their Jewish American lawyer filed a class-action lawsuit against four school districts in Orange County, California, to end the segregation of ethnic Mexican children. In a shocking decision, the court ruled in favor of plaintiffs, setting a legal and historical precedent in Mendez, et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County that shook the foundations of Jim Crow America and led to the end of de jure school segregation across the nation. Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California (Oxford UP, 2025) tells the story of how ethnic Mexicans in a relatively unknown agricultural backwater built the unprecedented movement that led to this decision. Beginning in the 1880s, David-James Gonzales details the social and economic history of Orange County, explaining how citrus capitalists, seeking increased market share and profitability, established the walls of segregation to manage ethnic Mexican family labor. By the early 1930s, ethnic Mexicans were segregated into over fifty underserved colonias and barrios. Without training or support from national civil rights organizations, they mobilized against segregation and inequality beginning in the late 1920s. Ethnic Mexican grassroots organizations proliferated throughout the county, intent on engaging in civic affairs and ending anti-Mexican discrimination and segregation. This movement, comprised of immigrants, citizens, parents, children, emerging activists, and their non-Mexican allies, paved the way for the growth of LULAC and nationwide organizing. As an essential part of the "long civil rights movement," the ethnic Mexican struggle against segregation in Orange County illustrates how minoritized groups have historically pushed US social, economic, and political institutions to live up to the nation's founding ideals. David-James Gonzales is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

    1h 1m

  8. Apr 13

    Gabriel S. Estrada, "Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

    In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholar Gabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This groundbreaking work uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The book's seven chapters--each one of the directions--look closely at media such as cinema and streaming videos that draw on Indigenous concepts from diverse nations such as Diné, Caxcan, Kanaka Maoli, and Nehiyawak. Gabriel S. Estrada is a Caxcan/Xicanx professor in religious studies at California State University Long Beach, where ze teaches queer spirituality, Indigenous graduate classes, and Nahuatl literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

    1h 34m
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4.8
out of 5
34 Ratings

About

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies

Information

  • Creator
    Marshall Poe
  • Years Active
    2011 - 2026
  • Episodes
    399
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Show Website
    New Books in Latino Studies

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