Publishing in “Latino Studies”: A View From the Editor’s Desk

Marta Caminero-Santangelo is University Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Kansas. Professor Caminero-Santangelo has authored three books and dozens of journal articles and book chapters. Currently the editor of the journal Latino Studies, Caminero-Santangelo will be discussing the journal’s editorial practices and offering authors advice for submission success. Register for this Zoom event here.

The central issue Caminero-Santangelo addresses in her work on 20th and 21st century Latinx Studies is the conjunction between literature, group identity, and social justice. Recent literary scholarship has paid particular attention to how literature, understood broadly to include life-writing, oral histories, and testimonio, can contribute to “community” building, solidarity movements, social activism, and human rights struggles, and can thus play a role in inducing social change. Caminero-Santangelo’s scholarship explores these intersections and possibilities and is guided by an investment in making literary studies relevant to the “real”–to real, lived experiences–of Latinx communities. She aims to connect the work she performs as a scholar to larger discussions of effective social and political practices for groups that have experienced marginalization, disempowerment, or more extreme forms of oppression. As Professor Caminero-Santangelo sees it, “literature is one of many cultural forms that can participate in this larger discussion, because ‘good stories’ tell powerful, engrossing narratives about who we are, what our place in the world is, what we can do about it, and what challenges we may face along the way.”

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