51ÁÔÆæ

Monday, February 16, 2026
3:00pm – 4:00pm
American Geographical Society Library (AGSL)
51ÁÔÆæ Libraries, 3rd floor east wing

This talk is part of the LACUSL Speaker Series: Join us to learn about the many topics you can study through 51ÁÔÆæ’s interdisciplinary LACUSL major (Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies). Save the date for our other Spring 2026 LACUSL talks!

Borges, Joyce, and the Not-Quite-First Spanish-Language Review of Ulysses

Jorge Luis Borges famously claimed himself to be the first hispano to embark upon the odyssey of reading and reviewing James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). Along with his 1925 review, he also translated the last two pages of the novel, Molly Bloom’s sensation-creating, stream-of-consciousness monologue. Perhaps starstruck by the legendary pairing of two of the twentieth century’s most influential authors, many scholars have taken his claim as indisputable evidence that Borges single-handedly introduced Joyce to Latin America, and of the enduring impact of his translation. This talk will reveal that the true story of Joyce’s introduction to Spanish language readers is both more complex and more interesting than the one traditionally told.

Dr. Leah Leone Anderson is a Visiting Scholar with 51ÁÔÆæ’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her book, (2024) was made possible with CLACS’s support. Her current research focuses on the work of Argentine critic, translator, and memoirist María Rosa Oliver (1898-1977).

Free & open to the public
No registration required
For questions or accessibility accommodations, please contact: clacs@uwm.edu

This recurring speaker series aims to introduce students in our academic programs (Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies) to the rich variety of research being done in these fields. (Check out our academic programs website!)

With this series, we provide a welcoming environment for students to connect with 51ÁÔÆæ faculty and other local researchers who specialize in these areas – we encourage presenters to share the story of how they arrived at their current area of research and what motivates them to continue honing that expertise. Spring 2026 talks are listed below; talk titles will be added and linked to event descriptions as individual details are finalized.

All talks are free and open to the public, and will take place in the American Geographical Society Library (51ÁÔÆæ Libraries, 3rd floor east wing):

Monday February 16, 3:00pm-4:00pm
Dr. Leah Leone Anderson (51ÁÔÆæ CLACS, Visiting Scholar and literary translator)
“Borges, Joyce, and the Not-Quite-First Spanish-Language Review of Ulysses“

Thursday March 12, 3:00pm-4:00pm
Professor Maria Soledad Gillespie (UW-Milwaukee, Dance)
“Moving Between Tongues: Choreographing Translation and Embodied Memory”

Wednesday April 15, 3:00pm-4:00pm
Professor David Pacifico (UW-Milwaukee, Art History and Archaeology)
Ancient Urbanism in Peru’s Casma Valley

No registration is required. For questions or accessibility accommodations, please contact: clacs@uwm.edu

Thursday February 26
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Lubar Entrepreneurship Center* atrium
2100 E. 51ÁÔÆæ., Milwaukee WI (entrance off Maryland Ave.)
*Not Lubar Hall. See below for map with suggested parking

Free and open to the public
RSVP below by February 19 so we can gauge interest

Cocina Libre: Building Community through Immigrant Stories & Food Cultures

Join us for an evening of food, film, and connection as we host professor and licensed therapist Julia Roncoroni (University of Denver; founder) and Chef Gregory León (, Milwaukee). Both speakers grew up in Latin America and prioritize the sharing of food cultures as a way to build belonging and connection in their local communities. Attendees will watch a short documentary (40 min.) about Cocina Libre’s impact on chef participants; hear directly from Dr. Julia and Chef Greg about their work; and get to sample light appetizers from Chef Greg’s Amilinda offerings!

Speaker Dr. Julia Roncoroni (she/her) is an immigrant from Argentina, a licensed psychologist, and a tenured at the University of Denver. In Denver she founded the organization to create space for stories that nourish, challenge, and connect us—stories of migration, struggle, joy, and collective strength. Her work is grounded in liberation psychology and driven by a commitment to justice, healing, and cultural pride.

At the University of Denver she leads the Health Disparities Research Lab, which builds community partnerships focused on culturally sensitive health promotion. Learn more about Professor Roncoroni’s clinical work and psychological research at the 51ÁÔÆæ Psychology Research Colloquium on Friday, February 27 (3pm in Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex, room 1150).

Speaker Chef Gregory León is owner and operator of in Milwaukee, where he cooks almost every night. León is a four-time James Beard Award nominee, was honored as a finalist for Best Chef Midwest in 2022 and 2023, and was a semifinalist for Outstanding Chef in 2024 and 2025. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Chef León moved to his father’s native Venezuela at age 5, returning at 19 and beginning his culinary career shortly after. He builds community in Milwaukee and beyond through charity events, meal donations, and offering professional support for underrepresented chefs.

Moderator Dr. Gabriela Nagy is Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and 2025-26 Faculty Fellow with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. The overarching focus of her research is on reducing mental health care inequities experienced by minoritized communities, particularly immigrants and refugees from Latin America. is focused on understanding social and structural factors contributing to health inequities; developing and testing psychosocial interventions to support the health of minoritized communities; and dissemination and implementation of strategies that hold promise for reducing health inequities. She utilizes community-engaged research methods, mixed-methods, and human-centered design approaches.

This event is presented by the UW-Milwaukee Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Division of Community Empowerment and Institutional Inclusivity.

For questions or access needs, please contact clacs@uwm.edu.

REGISTRATION: Thank you for your interest! Registration for this event has closed. Please contact Monica VanBladel (vanblade@uwm.edu) with any questions.

Map and directions

This event will take place in the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center (LEC), which shares a building with the UW-Milwaukee Welcome Center. The building entrance is off of Maryland Ave. Be careful not to accidentally go to Lubar Hall.

Paid hourly parking is available through 51ÁÔÆæ garages at either Lubar Garage (circled below) or the 51ÁÔÆæ Student Union Garage (entrance off of westbound 51ÁÔÆæ.; building access to walk through Student Union toward LEC).

CLACS Faculty Affiliate and 2025-26 CLACS Fellow, Professor Susana Antunes (51ÁÔÆæ World Languages & Cultures) recently celebrated the December 2025 publication of her co-edited volume, Sentient Books: AI’s Impact on Creation. Prepared with Professor Sandra Sousa (University of Central Florida, Modern Languages and Literatures), the collection assembles international voices from literature, theatre, linguistics, law, and digital humanities to illuminate AI’s transformative—and potentially apocalyptic—impact on creative endeavor.

As the publisher notes, “What distinguishes Sentient Books as indispensable scholarship is its unflinching examination of AI’s assault on academic values. … this collection provides essential vocabulary for articulating what remains irreducibly human.” The book is .

Anyone interested in learning more is warmly welcomed to join the virtual book presentation taking place on March 3, 2026, at 11am CT – Professors Antunes and Sousa will be joined by Professor Daniel Silva (Middlebury College, Luso-Hispanic Studies) for a conversation about the book followed by a Q&A. Contact Susana Antunes for zoom details.

With support from many wonderful partners, CLACS presented 62 fantastic programs in 2025, promoting a deeper understanding of Latin America and the Caribbean far and wide. Some of our recent audiences included Milwaukee Public Schools students, K-12 educators across the U.S., 51ÁÔÆæ students and faculty, and Milwaukee community members!

See some of our highlights on our and . Thanks for joining us this year, and we look forward to many more great collaborations in 2026!

CLACS Faculty Affiliate Professor Amy Olen (51ÁÔÆæ Translation & Interpreting Studies) has recently published a new literary translation: the short story collection , released in December 2025 with Northwestern University Press.

The new book is the first English-language collection of short stories by award-winning Peruvian author Edgardo Rivera Martínez, and includes a foreword by CLACS Faculty Affiliate Professor César Ferreira (51ÁÔÆæ Spanish).

The publisher’s website notes that “Amy Olen’s translation smoothly captures Rivera Martínez’s impressive stories, offering a unique lens into the region at the heart of this canonical author’s inimitable work.”

Read more about this new release on .

Saturday, January 24, 2026
11:00 am – 12noon CT
Zoom webinar –
Free and open to all!

Global Reads Webinar: Author Nadine Pinede on her YA Novel When the Mapou Sings

K-12 educators, join us for a conversation with Nadine Pinede, author of the 2025 Honor Book, When the Mapou Sings. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the book with the author and consider classroom applications.

Infused with magical realism, this story blends first love and political intrigue with a quest for justice and self-determination in 1930s Haiti.

Sixteen-year-old Lucille hopes to one day open a school alongside her best friend where girls just like them can learn what it means to be Haitian: to learn from the mountains and the forests around them, to carve, to sew, to draw, and to sing the songs of the Mapou, the sacred trees that dot the island nation. But when her friend vanishes without a trace, a dream—a gift from the Mapou—tells Lucille to go to her village’s section chief, the local face of law, order, and corruption, which puts her life and her family’s at risk.

Forced to flee her home, Lucille takes a servant post with a wealthy Haitian woman from society’s elite in Port-au-Prince. Despite a warning to avoid him, she falls in love with her employer’s son. But when their relationship is found out, she must leave again—this time banished to another city to work for a visiting American writer and academic conducting fieldwork in Haiti. While Lucille’s new employer studies vodou and works on the novel that will become Their Eyes Were Watching God, Lucille risks losing everything she cares about—and any chance of seeing her best friend again—as she fights to save their lives and secure her future in this novel in verse with the racing heart of a thriller.

For more information, please email Katrina Dillon at kedillon@arizona.edu.

2026 Global Reads Webinar Series

Once a month throughout the Spring, the World Area Book Awards (Américas Award, Children’s Africana Book Award, Freeman Book Award, Middle East Book Award, and South Asia Book Award) sponsor a free 60-minute webinar on a book recognized by one of the awards to facilitate a discussion with the author on how to incorporate the book into the classroom. We encourage educators to read the books with your colleagues, students, and community, and then join us to hear more from the author.

Future 2026 webinars (February-June 2026) will be updated soon .

Américas Award Sponsors

The awards are administered by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP) and coordinated by both Tulane University’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the University of Arizona’s Center for Latin American Studies. Generous support is also provided by Florida International University, Michigan State University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Florida, University of Michigan, University of New Mexico, University of Texas at Austin, University of Utah, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Vanderbilt University.

51ÁÔÆæ’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) recently teamed up with 51ÁÔÆæ ArtsECO and the Mexican Consulate in Milwaukee to bring an arts and culture program about migration to students at South Division High School.

These students, currently taking coursework in education or Latin American studies, are no strangers to the way that migration has shaped communities in Milwaukee and beyond. This gathering in the SDHS library the morning of November 11 offered them an opportunity to deepen that conversation and consider how different experiences of migration shape people’s families and emotional lives, and how art can help express some of those experiences.

The program was centered around the innovative animated documentary , which presents three stories from Mexican-American youth about their migration experiences in their own words. The film then pairs those firsthand testimonies with rich animated visuals, each story with its own artistic style.

At South Division, students watched the segment “A Tale of Two Sisters” – about sisters whose differing documentation status affect their career goals in different ways. After briefly reflecting on the obstacles and resilience in their stories, students then had the opportunity to speak with Mexican directors and animators Carlos Hagerman and Jorge Villalobos, on topics ranging from their creative process to their motivation for sharing these stories.

As one student commented, “this story really opened my eyes to this experience [of migration]”; others shared that the segment reminded them of their own families, with different generations living across countries and languages.

After learning more about the steps involved in gathering and representing these stories, students had the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences of home through visual art. In an exercise designed by 51ÁÔÆæ alumna Calea Sowell and current Art Education student Gaby Duarte, the students learned how to fold their own zines and then used watercolor, ink pens, colored pencils, and more to share scenes of heritage, belonging, and identity from their own lives.

Combining this film screening with artistic creation and reflective and interpretive dialogue allowed students to draw on diverse strengths as they engaged more deeply with the topic of migration and how it affects all of our lives.

Interested 51ÁÔÆæ affiliates can stream the full documentary  using their ePanther login.

Thursday, January 22
4:00pm CT – 5:00pm CT
Zoom webinar –
Free and open to all!

This session will be recorded and made available afterward to all who register.

Career educators: join UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies to learn about free teaching resources and curriculum available through Digital Promise to help globalize your CTE classroom!

These materials are designed to support high school and community college educators working in career and technical education, allowing you to globalize your instruction and thereby better prepare your students for our global economy.

Educator Webinar: Preparing Students for Success in a Global Economy

Today’s students will be graduating into a world that is ever more interconnected. One in ten Americans is foreign born, and local communities—urban, suburban, and rural—are growing more diverse. To take advantage of global market opportunities, companies want employees with knowledge of global trends in their industry and the ability to work across cultures. Therefore, career and technical education (CTE/TVET) instructors must prepare their students to compete, connect, and cooperate on an international scale. Using real-world, global issues in the classroom can more deeply engage students in CTE content and lead to enduring interest in career pathways. Educators will leave this session with an understanding of global competence and how to begin to integrate it into what is being taught in CTE (vocational education) courses. Examples of engaging projects as well as free online professional development courses and tools will be shared.

About our facilitator, Verónica Vázquez Ugalde

Working with Digital Promise’s Global Cities Education Network, Verónica helps design and organize global learning opportunities that empower education leaders to share and explore promising solutions to systemic education challenges that can improve education for all. She also manages programs focused on training secondary and post-secondary educators to incorporate global competence into curriculum. Before joining Digital Promise, Verónica led program development, teacher training, and evaluation at Empatico, a platform that enabled elementary school classrooms around the world to connect through virtual exchanges to foster cross-cultural collaboration, empathy, and other career readiness skills. Verónica graduated with a BS in Economics from American University and an MA in Economic Policy from Boston University.