Latinx Studies | Call for nominations for the awards of the Latinx Studies Section 2026

Call for nominations for the awards of the Latinx Studies Section 2026 - CLOSED

Dear members of Latinx Studies Section,

We announce that we closed the call for nominations for the awards of the Latinx Studies Section. These are the awards for our section. Please do not confuse them with the awards given by LASA as an organization.

Please, take into account this information:

a) Categories

Latinx Studies Trajectory/Lifetime Award

This award will be given to a senior scholar who has made distinguished lifetime contributions, generated new interest in the field and/or opened up new areas of inquiry for Latinx Studies research. Nominations should include a paragraph (max. 500 words) describing the impact of the nominee’s work in Latinx Studies, along with a curriculum vitae and a link to the nominee’s institutional or personal website. Self-nominations are not permitted. Nominators and nominees must be members of LASA and of the Latinx Studies section.

Information must be sent to: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSctjCCLjS2aSFTaoOoO6Xqm3cn8Hoj2AGHYRtz82PI4epJKIw/viewform

Book Award

This award will be given to the author(s) of the best book published in 2024 or 2025 in the field of Latinx Studies. The award is open to Latinx Studies section members. Nominations should include the citation information for the book and a single paragraph (max. 500 words) explanation of its subject, along with a link to the publisher’s website. Email the book information (as a .doc or .pdf file) to the official link of the call. Nominations and self-nominations are permitted. Nominators and nominees must be members of LASA and of the Latinx Studies section.

Information must be sent to:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf0n5qg-YJozmuuK0-naiQSamJ5aizte4YVWZgKvcnCgEqpmg/viewform

Article Award

This award will be given to the author(s) of a journal article published in 2024 or 2025 that makes an innovative, original conceptual and/or methodological contribution in Latinx Studies. The journal article window begins once the article is assigned to a specific print issue. The award is open to Latinx Studies section members. Digital copies of the paper must be submitted to the official link of the call. Nominations and self-nominations are permitted. Nominators and nominees must be members of LASA and of the Latinx Studies section.

Information must be sent to:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXJjmhTZefAV7Onr1GGBnzxOWKkuqZtRlykYjNM9MjrJCvbA/viewform

b) Deadline for nominations: October 15 2025.

c) Awards jury (alphabetical order):

Melisa Argañaraz (University of Connecticut)

Pablo Biderbost (University of Salamanca)

Christian Hernandez (University of the Hesperides)

Eric Macias (American University)

Maria Puerta (Valencia College)

d) Award resolution:

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the Latinx Studies Section awards. The selection process was extremely challenging for the jury: more than 50 submissions were received, and the evaluation was long and rigorous. The jury is now pleased to share the results with our community:

The Article Award in the Humanities category goes to Carlos Velazco Fernández, for his outstanding manuscript, Jicotea en Estados Unidos: Lydia Cabrera y el puente antropomórfico a la diáspora cubana. The jury’s statement regarding the winning submission is as follows:

"This article offers an original interpretation of Lydia Cabrera's Jicotea, moving beyond established literary, religious, and gender/queer readings to argue that, after the author's 1960 exile, the character becomes an anthropomorphic bridge articulating the recontextualization of Afro-Cuban religions in the North American diaspora. Drawing on short stories, essays, and private correspondence, Velazco demonstrates how Cabrera shaped Jicotea as a symbol of the historical reality of Cuban exile. The study further reveals an ecological ethic rooted in the African-inspired religiosity of Cuban diasporic communities in the United States. This interdisciplinary approach makes a significant contribution to Latinx Studies by illuminating how displaced communities negotiate cultural identity, spirituality, and belonging through folklore. The article exemplifies innovative scholarship that enriches our understanding of Cuban-American cultural production and its transnational dimensions."

Furthermore, an Honorable mention in the Humanities article category is awarded to Nancy Kang, for her work, Madre de Sangre/Mother of Blood: Vampirizing La Virgen. The jury’s statement is as follows:

“This article merits high distinction for introducing a powerful concept, 'motheroticism,' which reorganizes debates on desire, care, and religiosity in Chicana/lesbian literature. Its comparative reading offers solid textual evidence and opens up a critical vocabulary that can be applied to other corpora where the sacred and the erotic intertwine along racialized lines.”

The Article award, in the Social Sciences category, goes to Eduardo Muñoz Suarez, who wrote with Jorge Restrepo Garcia and Lindsey Meeks an article named Being Hispanic Matters? Ethnicity as Predictor of Vote Preference in the Arizona 2024 U.S. Senate Election. The jury’s statement is as follows:

“This article makes a timely and empirically rigorous contribution to Latinx Studies by examining how the strength of ethnic self-identification shapes candidate evaluations among Hispanic voters in the 2024 Arizona U.S. Senate election. Using Social Identity Theory and original survey data from 373 Arizona residents, the study reveals that Hispanic voters with stronger ethnic identification evaluate co-ethnic candidates more favorably, while White voters show little variation based on ethnic identity. Importantly, the findings challenge prevailing assumptions about co-ethnic voting by demonstrating that alignment on policy issues—particularly immigration—emerged as a stronger predictor of candidate evaluations than ethnicity itself. This research offers critical insights into the evolving political behavior of Latinx electorates, suggesting a shift toward issue-based decision-making that complicates simplistic narratives about identity politics. The study's focus on a pivotal battleground state with a growing Hispanic population makes it especially relevant for understanding contemporary Latinx political engagement in the United States.”

Additionally, an Honorable mention in the Social Sciences article category is awarded to Arturo Chang for his work, Tradition and Disruption in Latinx and Latin American Political Thought, written with Inés Waldez and Raymond Rocco. The jury’s statement is as follows:

“This article provides a useful conceptual framework for thinking about how cultural memory and performance produce, and sometimes normalize, versions of Latinidad. Its contribution rests on a careful genealogy and a critical reading of contemporary reactivations, offering a transferable tool for studies of archive, representation, and identity.”

The Book award in the Humanities category goes to Lilian Gorman, for her excellent book named Zones of encuentro: Language and Identities in Northern New Mexico. The jury’s statement is as follows:

"This book makes a timely and conceptually innovative contribution to Latinx Studies by introducing 'zones of encuentro' as a framework for understanding intra-Latinx tensions and solidarities. It centers a critically understudied population: Mexican–New Mexican mixed families in northern New Mexico. The work is built upon a robust empirical foundation of interviews and pláticas conducted across multiple localities, illuminating how linguistic experience structures belonging, authenticity, and ethnolinguistic identities. The manuscript demonstrates a solid anchoring in debates on Latinidad, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and cultural studies, while its comprehensive bibliography and index ensure traceability and strong pedagogical value. Finally, its interdisciplinary and transparent design—combining interviews, pláticas, and linguistic ethnography, with appendices featuring bilingual guides and supporting tables and figures—provides a rigorous and accessible model for sustaining its central arguments. This is an original and vital contribution to the field."

Furthermore, an Honorable mention in the Humanities book category is awarded to Stephanie Canizales for her work, Everyday futures – Language as Survival for Indigenous Youth in Diaspora, co-authored with Brendan H. O’Connor. The jury’s statement is as follows:

“This work merits recognition for its theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of indigenous immigrant youth incorporation through the conceptualization of sobrevivencia as a process that integrates material, social, cultural, and linguistic dimensions of sustained thriving in diasporic contexts. The book documents, through a six-year longitudinal ethnography and 36 in-depth interviews, the trajectories of unaccompanied Guatemalan Maya-speaking youth in Los Angeles, developing a processual model of incorporation (orientation–preparation–adaptation–sobrevivencia) that captures dynamics specific to populations who assume adult responsibilities without institutional or parental mediation. The interdisciplinary collaboration between sociology and linguistic anthropology produces an integrated analysis of the role of multilingual linguistic capital (Mayan languages, Spanish, English) in socioeconomic mobility and identity construction. The work contextualizes these trajectories within long histories of colonial violence and genocide in Guatemala, extending conceptual frameworks of linguistic survivance developed in Native/Indigenous North American studies to the analysis of indigenous Latin American immigrants, thereby laying the groundwork for an emerging subfield on the incorporation of populations historically subsumed under homogenizing panethnic categories.”

The Book award, in the Social Sciences category, goes to Tania Lizarazo, for her excellent book named Postconflict Utopias. The jury’s statement is as follows:

“This book makes an original contribution to Latin American cultural studies and Black feminist thought by examining how Afro-Colombian women in Chocó imagine and enact postconflict futures through everyday practices of survival, activism, and storytelling. Focusing on members of COCOMACIA, the largest Black peasants' association in Colombia's Pacific lowlands, the study centers a population whose experiences of violence and peace-building have been historically marginalized. Drawing on life stories and collaborative research with women from riverine communities, Lizarazo illuminates how embodied practices—from caretaking to communal organizing—function as rehearsals of peace and worldmaking. The work is solidly anchored in interdisciplinary debates on violence, memory, utopia, and dissident feminisms, demonstrating sophisticated engagement with existing scholarship. Its methodology, merging ethnographic fieldwork, life stories, and collaborative digital storytelling projects, is transparent and ethically grounded, offering a model for research that centers community knowledge. With its rich empirical foundation and conceptual ambition, Postconflict Utopias is a vital interdisciplinary contribution to the field.”

Furthermore, an Honorable mention in the Social Sciences book category is awarded to Regina Mills, for her book, Invisibility and Influence: A Literary History of AfroLatinidades. The jury’s statement is as follows:

“This book makes a high-impact contribution to AfroLatinx studies by proposing a literary history of AfroLatinidades organized around life writing and the conceptual axis of visibility/invisibility/hypervisibility, all in critical dialogue with hegemonic frameworks of mestizaje. Through close and contextualized readings of a broad corpus spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—complemented by archival work where possible—the study strengthens the historical traceability of its objects of analysis. The manuscript demonstrates a solid and up-to-date command of debates in AfroLatinx studies, Black studies, Latinx studies, and life writing studies, while integrating critical genealogies from Black feminism and women of color feminism. Its comprehensive bibliography and index further enhance its scholarly and pedagogical value. The interdisciplinary strategy, which weaves together literary theory, life writing, racial critique, and archival research, is well justified and sustained with conceptual transparency and analytical consistency. This is a rigorous, ambitious, and field-defining work."

Finally, we have to celebrate and recognize two Lifetime Achievement Awards:

In memoriam, in the Humanities category, the jury awards Debra Castillo

“Debra A. Castillo, Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Hispanic Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University, devoted over four decades to transforming the fields of Latinx literary and cultural studies through groundbreaking scholarship on gender, migration, and border narratives. As (co-)author or (co-)editor of more than twenty books—including Talking Back: Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism, Border Women: Writing from La Frontera, and Re-dreaming America: Toward a Bilingual Understanding of American Literature—and over 150 scholarly articles, she produced one of the most consequential bodies of work in the Humanities of Latinx Studies. Her intellectual leadership extended to the presidency of the Latin American Studies Association (2014–2015) and to her editorial stewardship of journals such as Diacritics, Latin American Literary Review, and Letras Femeninas, shaping the standards of the discipline for generations. Equally remarkable was her tireless commitment to mentoring emerging scholars and building inclusive academic communities across the Americas, a legacy universally acknowledged by colleagues and students alike. The Latinx Studies Section honors Professor Castillo's extraordinary and enduring contributions to the Humanities by conferring this award posthumously, recognizing a career that redefined how we read, teach, and think about Latinx cultural production.”

In the Social Sciences category, the jury awards Silvia Pedraza.

“Silvia Pedraza, Professor of Sociology and American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has dedicated over four decades to advancing our understanding of immigration, race, ethnicity, and political exile as interconnected social processes, producing a body of work that has fundamentally shaped the Social Sciences of Latinx Studies. Her landmark books—Political Disaffection in Cuba's Revolution and Exodus (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Revolutions in Cuba and Venezuela: One Hope, Two Realities (University Press of Florida, 2023, with Carlos A. Romero)—along with her pioneering article "Women and Migration: The Social Consequences of Gender" (Annual Review of Sociology, 1991), have set enduring analytical frameworks for studying migration as a historical force that transforms persons and nations. Her exceptional disciplinary leadership is evidenced by her election as Chair of three sections of the American Sociological Association—Latina/o Sociology, Race and Ethnic Minorities, and International Migration—as well as her presidency of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy and Society (ASCE), and her receipt of the ASA's Julian Samora Distinguished Career Award. A Cuban immigrant herself, Professor Pedraza has trained generations of scholars at the University of Michigan—earning multiple Excellence in Education Awards—while serving as Associate Editor of Social Science History and as an unwavering advocate for diversity and equity in higher education and faculty governance. The Latinx Studies Section is honored to recognize Professor Pedraza's transformative and enduring contributions to the Social Sciences through this Lifetime Achievement Award.”

We extend our sincere congratulations to all the awardees for their exceptional contributions to the field. Winners will soon receive the certificate given by the LASA Secretariat.

Many thanks for your support to our section!

Best regards

Latinx Studies Section - Board