Dr. Jennifer Leeman, Professor of Spanish in Modern and Classical Languages, delivered the 5th Annual Distinguished Lecture in the Latin American, Caribbean & Latino Studies Program (LACLS) at the University of Kentucky on March 7th, 2025. In her talk, “Shades of whiteness: Language-based racialization of immigrants in the US Census”, Dr. Leeman discussed how the early 20th century mother tongue question was used by the Census Bureau to distinguish among the “white races” arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe and she compared this to the place of Spanish language in the construction of the current Hispanic/Latino category. Further, she presented excerpts from census interviews to demonstrate the ways that some immigrant respondents are constructed as both white and non-white, based in part on the language in which the interview takes place.
Dr. Leeman also gave a teaching seminar in the Department of Hispanic Studies titled “Transformative Language Teaching: The Role of Critical Language Awareness in Antiracist and Social Justice Education”. She explored the theoretical underpinnings, goals and development of Critical Language Awareness (CLA), a teaching approach that centers on the sociopolitics of language and its role in perpetuating and/or resisting systems of inequality. Leeman explained how CLA aligns with and differs from other antiracist and social justice-oriented pedagogies and argued that by offering students tools to resist linguistic prejudice and language-based discrimination, CLA-based Spanish language education can contribute to broader anti-racist and social justice oriented pedagogical projects.
March 21, 2025