Lisa Ortiz (Sawyer Mellon Post Doctoral Fellow) and Kristy Nabhan-Warren (Religious Studies and GWSS) have both done research on meatpacking plants and the rural Latin/x communities surrounding them. In this conversation, the scholars discuss the role of churches during the COVID-19 outbreak and how workers are using social media to communicate.

Lisa Ortiz earned her Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies with minors in Latina/o Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work is grounded at the intersection of (im)migration, media, education, gender, and Latina/o/x studies. She was recently named a University of Iowa Provost Postdoctoral Fellow for 2020-21 and will have joint appointments in GWSS and Latino Studies.

Kristy Nabhan-Warren is Associate Professor and Figge Chair of Catholic Studies at the UI. She is the author of The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (NYU Press, 2005) and Cursillos in America: Catholics, Protestants and Fourth Day Spirituality (UNC Press, 2013). She is currently working on two manuscripts; Latin@ Religions and the Reconquista of América is a synthesis and critical examination of U.S. Latin@ religions from 1848 to the present. Cornbelt Catholicism: Latinos and the American Heartland (forthcoming from UNC Press, Fall 2021) focuses on how both historically situated as well as ethnographically informed, community-based research can uncover hidden histories and stories.