UW–Madison alumna Laura C. Chávez-Moreno has received an award from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) for her book, “How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America.”
Chávez-Moreno earned her PhD in 2018 from the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, with joint appointments in the Departments of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Education.
In “How Schools Make Race,” which was named AAHHE’s Book of the Year by an Early Career Scholar, Chávez-Moreno investigates how schools both enhance and hinder students’ critical-racial consciousness through the making of the Latinx racialized group. The book examines how educational practices, policies, pedagogy, language, and social ideas interact to form, reinforce, and blur racial boundaries in school settings. Chávez-Moreno analyzes how this process shapes students’ understanding of race and the implications this has for educational equity.
The book explores how Spanish-English bilingual education programs can participate in race-making, and how schools might instead support ambitious teaching that raises students’ critical awareness of race and racialization. Chávez-Moreno invites readers to reconsider how Latinidad is constructed in relation to Blackness, Indigeneity, Asianness, and Whiteness.
The AAHHE award recognizes significant scholarly contributions to higher education by early career researchers.
Learn more about “How Schools Make Race.”