Speaker Oct. 15 to Discuss Current U.S. System of Undocumented Immigration

Jorge Chapa of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will describe and assess the current U.S. system of undocumented immigration in a lecture titled "Apple Pie & Enchiladas" at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15, in the Old Main Room of Illinois State University's Bone Student Center.

Sponsored by Diversity Advocacy and the Latin American and Latino Studies program, the lecture is free and open to the public.  Chapa's appearance is part of the October calendar of the Diversity Advocacy office at Illinois State.

Chapa, who is director of the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at the U of I will highlight the following topics: the role of employers in encouraging immigration; recent Latino immigration to the rural Midwest; racialized violence against "Mexican" immigrants; and dimensions of current immigration enforcement and reform.

Before taking the position at Illinois two years ago, Chapa was a professor and founding director of Latino Studies at Indiana University at Bloomington.  From 1988 through 1999, Chapa was a faculty member of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He also served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Director of the Graduate Opportunity Program at UT Austin.

His education includes a B.A. in Biology with Honors from the University of Chicago and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology and a separate M.A. in Demography from U. C. Berkeley. He has scores of publications, and his latest book, "Apple Pie and Enchiladas: Latino Newcomers in the Rural Midwest" has been nominated for the Senior Book Award of the American Ethnological Society. Among his honors are being named the Outstanding Latino/a Faculty Award in Higher Education Research and Teaching by the American Association for Hispanic Higher Education.

Other Diversity Advocacy events during October include "Changing Avant-Gardes: Chilean Literature in Translation" by poet Daniel Borzutsky at noon Wednesday, Oct. 1, in the third floor east lounge of Bone Student Center, and at 5:30 p.m. the same day and location, the Disability Awareness Kickoff.

The University Galleries exhibition, "Transfigurations," will run from from Oct. 7 to 31.  The award-winning photo documentary by California photographer Jana Marcus explores transsexuals and their notions of masculinity and femininity as they change gender identities.  Admission is free.  The opening reception will include a public lecture by Marcus at 7 p.m. on Oct. 7.  The University Galleries is located in the Center for the Visual Arts.

A Safe Zone Brown Bag at noon on Oct. 8 in the Student Service Building room 314, will be a roundtable discussion about "Transfiguration" with Lyle Blake, one of the subjects in the photo exhibition.  Blake will share his experiences as a transgender person.

"Borderless: The Lives of Undocumented Workers," a short documentary, will be shown followed by a lecture and discussion by Maura Toro-Morn, Sociology-Anthropology, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, in Schroeder Hall room 236.  The documentary focuses on the question of how much do American and Canadian citizens really understand about the personal, social and economic struggles of undocumented workers. Admission is free and open to the public.