CSREA's New Book Talks series highlights new and notable work in the study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity from scholars both internal and external to Brown. The aim is to facilitate thought-provoking and critical engagement with emerging scholarship that helps the campus community understand how we study, research, and engage with the analysis of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity. In addition, these events provide important spaces for students, faculty, and fellows to familiarize themselves with new literature and ask detailed questions of writers in a constructive environment.

Legal scholar Laura E. Gómez from the University of California Los Angeles joins CSREA for this installment of the New Book Talk series. Her work, “Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism” charts the creation of the Latinx racial identity. It poses crucial questions as the Latino population in the United States grows past 20%–How does racism make some people’s race less malleable than others? Is race something we choose, or something we are given by others? Gómez’s legally-based perspective charts how the policies and attitudes of White supremacy adapt to control and confine new racial groups.

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Laura E. Gómez is the Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair in Law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is the Director of the Critical Race Studies Program (and was its co-founder in 2000). She is the recipient of the 2021 American Bar Foundation Outstanding Scholar Award and numerous other professional recognitions.

The event is moderated by Laura López-Sanders, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Brown.