People

  • Portrait (head shot photo)
  • Lilia Fernandez
  • Henry Rutgers Term Chair
  • Associate Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and History
  • Degree: Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
  • Additional Degree(s): M.A., University of California, San Diego Ed.M., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign B.A., Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
  • Rutgers : At Rutgers since 2016
  • Specialty: Twentieth-Century Latino/a History: Urban History
  • Email: lilia.fernandez@rutgers.edu
  • Office: Lucy Stone Hall Livingston Campus
  • Phone: 848-445-4344
  • Research Interests: Twentieth Century Latino/a history * Immigration History * Urban History * Urban Renewal and Gentrification * Women’s History * Race and Ethnicity

 COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT

  • 595:101 Intro to Latino Studies
  • 512:360/595:369 Latino History
  • 512:351/595:351 Mexican American History
  • 512:391/595:412 Latinos in New Jersey Seminar

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Books

  • Editor, 50 Events that Shaped Latino History: An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic (ABC-CLIO/Greenwood, 2018)
  • 2012 Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago (University of Chicago Press).

Book Chapters

  • “Latino/a Immigration Before 1965: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago” in The Latino Midwest Reader, edited by Omar Valerio-Jiménez, Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, and Claire F. Fox (University of Illinois Press, 2017).
  • “Moving Beyond Aztlán: Disrupting Nationalism and Geographic Essentialism in Chicano/a History,” in A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History, edited by Carlos K. Blanton (University of Texas Press, 2016): 59-83.
  • “Ronald Reagan, Race, Civil Rights, and Immigration,” in The Companion to Ronald Reagan, edited by Andrew Johns (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014): 185-203.
  • “Nativism, Xenophobia and Migration,” in Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
  • “Listening to House Music ‘Everywhere, Everyday’: Latino Youth Consuming and Producing Culture,” in Mapping Latina/o Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader, edited by Angharad Valdivia & Matt Garcia (Peter Lang, 2012), 237-261.
  • “From the Near West Side to 18th Street: Un/Making Latina/o Barrios in Postwar Chicago.” In Beyond el Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America, edited by Gina Pérez, Frank Guridy, and Adrian Burgos (NYU Press, 2010): 233-252.

Articles

  • “Living in the Shadow of the ‘Second Ghetto,’” essay commemorating the legacy of historian Arnold Hirsch, Journal of Urban History (December 2019).
  • “Race Baiting, Identity Politics, and the Impact of Conservative Economic Policies on Latinos/as” Latino Studies, 16, 4 (December 2018): 524-530.
  • “Urban History and the Construction of Social Difference,” special issue roundtable discussion honoring Michael B. Katz, Journal of Urban History 41, 4 (July 2015): 566-571.
  • “Of Migrants and Immigrants: Mexican and Puerto Rican Labor Migration in Comparative Perspective, 1942-1964.” Journal of American Ethnic History 29, no. 3 (2010): 6-39.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

  • Series Editor, “Historical Studies in Urban America,” University of Chicago Press, with Timothy Guilfoyle, Becky Nicolaides, and Amanda Seligman, April 2015 – ongoing
  • Advisory Board Member, Latino Studies Journal, Spring 2016 – ongoing
  • Editorial Board Member, Journal of Urban History, January 2019 – January 2023
  • Advisory Board Member, Latinos and the Law Initiative, American Bar Foundation, August 2014 – ongoing
  • Editorial Board Member, Journal of American Ethnic History, Fall 2013 - 2018