Next Spring Quarter, OSU will host Latino/a Studies in the Midwest: A Symposium, an event of great relevance to the development of this academic field at our institution. This Symposium is made possible thanks to the effort of the Latino/a Studies Committee, and the support of many university offices, academic units, and organizations, such as OHFS and HOC. Leading scholars and new practitioners of Latino/a Studies will present their most recent work. They will also discuss how the field is evolving after a decade of undeniable growth in American academia, growth which seems to respond to the demographic shift that has placed Latin@s as the largest minority in the United States. Directors of programs and research centers will also share with the OSU community their unique experience of pioneering an academic field at a time when there were few programs organized around issues of ethnicity. The aim of the event is then two-fold: to revisit the institutional and intellectual history of Latino/a Studies while envisioning the future of the field.

The recent academic consensus around the term “Latino/a”, as in “Latino/a Studies,” marks a certain shift from identification based on particular national communities (i.e. Chicano or Puerto Rican Studies). It also represents a critical response to the official use of the term “Hispanic.” Regardless of the context, agreeing on a specific identification category always implies an exercise in cultural politics. While “Hispanic” or “Latino/a” may be used interchangeably to include different Latino groups, the term “Hispanic Studies” now mostly refers to the study of those cultures in which Spanish is the dominant language. Therefore, it tends to focus on Spain and Latin America, in spite of the increasing relevance of Spanish in this country –the United States is the fourth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. Latino/a Studies evolves, then, as a field of inquiry, not only by establishing distinctions and connections with Latin American, Hispanic, Caribbean, Chicano, American, hemispheric, and transnational studies, but also by contributing to the encompassing field of race and ethnic studies. This means that one of the challenges for Latino/a Studies at any institution is its positioning among disciplines, area studies, and ethnic studies programs. Likewise, addressing the needs of the Latino communities in the United States and exploring their cultural diversity remain, and should remain, at the core of its intellectual enterprise.

The Symposium’s focus on the Midwest requires perhaps further clarification. It recognizes the importance of migration in relation to this region and, in general, to the changing demographic realities of the United States. With the exception of a few enclaves in the area, the increased presence of Latino/as in the Midwest is quite recent, although it represents a more diversified Latino population. This provides scholars with the opportunity to imagine new possibilities of interaction, transnational identity, and convivencia of the different Latino groups beyond the unitary and homogeneous community imagined by some and evidenced through frequent marketing and political strategies. The focus on Latino/as in the Midwest mainly attempts to capture the new geo-cultural and social realities. Some universities in the region are already taking note of these developments. A new resident fellowship program at UIC “Latino Chicago: A Model for Emerging Latinidades?” established with funds from the Rockefeller Foundation may serve as an example. Our institution should follow suit and contribute to the introduction of ways of understanding these social trends through innovative theoretical perspectives.

The development of Latino/a Studies at OSU, as part of a broader academic configuration for the study of comparative ethnicity and not as an independent program, promises to avoid an insularity that in some cases has placed programs at risk in other institutions, i.e. lack of funding. Necessary ways of intellectual interaction and negotiation at different levels will, then, be the order of the day in the immediate future of Latino/a Studies. We should, therefore, keep open the channels of communication among the administration, faculty, staff, and students as we continue redefining the field and our different expectations in relation to it. It is in this context that we expect that the April Symposium will engage a large number of participants, familiar or not with Latino/a scholarship, and it will go beyond the ways in which Latino/a identity is conceptualized to become a forum which will highlight the contributions of the field to the academic plan, the commitment to diversity, and the academic mission of the university.