(Don't) Call it the New South: Discussing Time, Place, Space, and Racialization for Latinx in the U.S. South

1:45pm-3:15pm

Presenter: Timothy Monreal, Rebeca Gamez, & Jesús A. Tirado

Session Type: Panel Discussion

Topic: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Connections

Description

We have lived, taught, and researched with/in the so-called New (Latinx) South (Carrillo, 2016; Hamann, 2003; Kochhar, Suro, & Tafoya, 2005; Moll, 2017; Odem, 2016; Portes & Salas, 2015; Salas & Portes, 2017) for years as doctoral students, classroom teachers, community members, and now university professors. Through our experiences we’ve come to see the concept of the New Latinx South, meant to describe the growth of Latinx communities in the U.S. South, as increasingly problematic and purposely nebulous, a forever future that masks how Latinx are negotiating place, space, belonging, and racialization “here” and “now.” The continual casting of Latinx as (forever) novel and unusual is neither an apolitical act nor a simple reflection of demographics. Being made to feel strange, a continual trespasser different from anything seen before, both misrepresents a longer albeit more recent history of Latinx in the South and erases the remarkable impact Latinx communities continue to have in Southern locales. Further, and directly tied to education, the New Latinx South represents a type of place-holder, even excuse, for school and district apathy as they continue to cover their unwillingness to devote resources, energy, and space to Latinx under the veil of (perpetual) surprise and shock (Stacy, Hamann, & Murillo, Jr, 2015). Thus, we largely agree with and seek to expand Flores’ (2019) contention that “The perpetual ‘newness’ of Latinxs to the US [South] is part of racializing Latinxs as perpetual outsiders.” Thus, the panelists reflect on the concept of the “New (Latinx) South” as one that offers possibility and potential but also casts Latinx in the region as (forever) foreign and new.

Facilitators

Dr. Timothy Monreal

Dr._Timothy_Monreal.jpg

Dr. Timothy Monreal earned his PhD in Foundations of Education at the University of South Carolina in 2020. Prior to joining CSUB, Dr. Monreal taught middle school for 11 years in California and South Carolina. Tim’s interdisciplinary research interests broadly include Latinx teacher identity and subjectivity, particularly in the U.S. South, Social Studies teaching with an emphasis on Latinx history, and teacher education. He applies and develops post-structural, post-humanist, and (relational) spatial theories with these topics to open up new, more just, potentialities. In addition to many book chapters, Dr. Monreal's work has appeared in journals such as Theory and Research in Urban Education, Latino Studies, Educational Policy, Urban Review, Journal of Latinos and Education, Current Issues in Comparative Education, and The Middle Grades Review. He was a Spencer Dissertation Fellow, a Southern Regional Education Board Doctoral Fellow, and a current research fellow at the University of Santa Clara's Latinx Research Hub. He is currently working on two edited books. Dr. Rebeca

Dr. Rebeca Gamez

Dr._Rebeca_Gamez.jpg

Rebeca is a Visiting Lecturer at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in the Language, Literacy, and Culture program. Rebeca’s research interests include relational and comparative race and ethnicity, space and place, immigration, and educational inequality, with a focus on how racialized and minoritized youth navigate their schooling, learning, and ethnoracial identities. Additionally, she has a broader interest in English Language Arts teaching and curriculum, teacher education, and critical qualitative research methodologies. She was an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Minority Dissertation Fellow. Prior to earning her doctorate in Education at Johns Hopkins University, she was a middle school literacy teacher in Trenton, New Jersey. She also has extensive experience in grassroots community organizing around financial justice, immigrant rights, and educational equity issues.

Dr. Jesús A. Tirado

Dr._Jesus_Tirado.jpg

Jesús is an Assistant Professor at Auburn University. His research interests include citizenship education, belonging, immigrant education and history, and social studies education. His work interrogates notions of belonging in different spaces and how we learn and eventually enact what we’ve learned and experienced using critical frameworks. His work has appeared in the Journal of Social Studies Research, Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, and Social Studies Education Review along with the book Latinx Curriculum Theory