Reading and Discussion with Author Rosina Lozano

Historian Rosina Lozano will discuss her book "An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States".

Historian Rosina Lozano will discuss her book An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States.

An American Language is Lozano's first book, published by The University of California Press in April 2018. The book is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States from the incorporation of the Mexican cession in 1848 through World War II, with some discussion of the following decades and present-day concerns. The nation has always been multilingual, and Spanish-language rights, in particular, have remained an important political issue into the present. The book is organized in two parts. The first five chapters argue that Spanish was a language of politics in the U.S. Southwest following the U.S. takeover. The second half of the book transitions to exploring the multifaceted use of Spanish in the twentieth century as it became a political language that instigated local and national political debates related to immigration and Americanization and aided the hemispheric interests of the nation.

About the Author Rosina Lozano is an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and a historian of Latino history with a research and teaching focus on Mexican American history, the American West, migration and immigration, and comparative studies in race and ethnicity. Lozano has received fellowships from the Huntington Library and the New Mexico Office of the State Historian to aid her research. During the 2012–2013 academic year, Lozano held a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation that she completed at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Stanford University.

This event is made possible with support from The City Library, Artes de México en Utah, and Utah Humanities.

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