Dr. Rene Rocha is Herman J. and Eileen S. Schmidt Chair, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Latina/o/x Studies Program at the University of Iowa. He is a leading scholar of racial and ethnic politics in the United States whose research has received prestigious recognition in his field.

Lindsay Vella is the Departmental Administrator for the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Magid Center for Writing, Classics, and African American Studies. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa.

Andrew Bribriesco is an adjunct assistant professor in the Latino/a/x Studies Program at the University of Iowa. Andrew received a J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law in 2010. He is the managing partner of Bribriesco Law Firm, PLLC. Andrew's primary interest is in Latina/o/x legal history and how the law (past and present) impacts U.S. Latinas/os/x and other racial/ethnic minority groups.

Dr. Jose Fernandez is an assistant professor in the Latina/o/x Studies Program at the University of Iowa. He received his Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University. His research interests include American, African American, and Latinx literary histories; Black and Latinx literatures after the 1960s; Latinx intellectual history; and Mexican American literature of the Borderlands.

Dr. Claire Fox is a co-founder of the Latina/o/x Studies minor, which developed from a series of Latino Midwest events that were held at the University of Iowa in 2012-13 and sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. With Omar Valerio-Jiménez and Santiago Vaquera Vásquez, she is co-editor of The Latino Midwest Reader. Her current research addresses Latina/o/x American place-making, visual culture, and cultural policy. She teaches courses on Latina/o/x literature and visual culture.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Jorge Guerra received his B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing at California State University/Long Beach. He is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was a Dean's Graduate Research Fellow. His research includes the Guatemalan Coup D'état of 1954, US-Cold War involvement in Guatemala/Latin America, the disappearances of Guatemalans during the Guatemalan Civil War, and Central American immigration in the United States. He finished his short story collection and is currently working on a novel on the outset of the Guatemalan Civil War.

Tracy Meginnis is the Administrative Services Specialist for the Division of Interdisciplinary Programs. Tracy received an M.F.A. in Fiction from New Mexico State University and has a background as an editor, writing instructor, English Language Arts test developer, and research project manager.

Dr. Lina-Maria Murillo is completing her first history manuscript titled Fighting for Control: Reproductive Care, Race, and Power in the U.S-Mexico Borderlands. In it, she examines the clinics, organizations, and institutions that helped foster access to reproductive care along the border in the twentieth century. Two other projects are also in progress. The first is tentatively titled, Making Gilead: White Demographic Decline and the End of Democracy, which highlights how “fears of white demographic decline” have translated into a hostile legal and social environment for pregnant women and people in the last two centuries. The second project is a biography of the little-known abortion rights activist Patricia Maginnis, who in the years before Roe v. Wade established an organized abortion network across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Dr. Kathleen Newman is an associate professor in Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Iowa. Her research and teaching focuses on Latin American, Chicano, and Spanish cinemas as well as on theoretical questions regarding the relation between fictional narrative and politics and the relation between cinema and globalization.

Christine Norquest is a Senior Academic Advisor at the Academic Advising Center serving as the liaison between the AAC and the Latina/o/x Studies Program at the University of Iowa. In this role, she works closely with advisors and faculty to promote the program, its courses, and its mission. She also provides advising for first-year students.

Dr. Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder is a scholar of twentieth and twenty-first century transnational American literature and culture. Her teaching and research interests include multiethnic literature and culture, (specifically African American and Latinx Studies), performance studies, women of color feminism, southern studies, and social movement activism.

Dr. Eric Vázquez is an assistant professor in Latina/o/x/ Studies and American Studies at the University of Iowa. His scholarship emphasizes the cultural, political, military, and economic bonds that link populations and institutions in the United States to Central America. His research interests include Transnational American studies; Latino/a/x studies; Central American studies; critical theory; war and culture; capital, financialization, and crisis; migration; film and media studies; and contemporary American literature