USC professor to give Hilldale Lecture

Laura Pulido, a faculty member at the University of Southern California, will present this year’s Hilldale Lecture for the Social Studies Division at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her talk, “Race, Regions and the Black/White Binary: Latinos in the New South,” is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 6, in the auditorium at the State Historical Society, 816 State St. A reception will follow the lecture.

During the last two decades, propelled by the forces of globalization, Latinos have been moving into the Southeastern United States in record numbers. This talk will explore how the presence of this new population may affect the racial politics of the South. Pulido will offer preliminary observations and discuss the significance of these changes to the larger racial politics of the United States.

Pulido is an associate professor of Geography and the Program in American Studies and Ethnicity. Her scholarly interests include race and ethnicity, Chicano/Latino studies, social movements, identity politics and Los Angeles. Her published work traces the roots of third-world radicalism in Southern California during the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on the Black Panther Party, El Centro de Acci�n Social y Autonomo (CASA) and East Wind, a Japanese American collective, and explores how these groups sought to realize their ideas about race and class, gender relations, and multiracial alliances.

Pulido is the recipient of the 2006 Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award and was awarded a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant in 2004.