Washington College will be hosting two virtual book talks in honor of Latinx Heritage Month. Featured speakers include Roberto Lovato, whose new memoir Unforgetting is hailed as an urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life; and Dr. Jennifer Domino Rudolph, whose study Baseball as Mediated Latinidad: Race, Masculinity, Nationalism and Performance of Identity, examines the perception by media and fans of Latino baseball players and the consumption of these athletes as both social and political stand-ins for an entire culture.
Dr. Rudolph’s talk entitled #PonleAcento: Major League Baseball and Latinx Identity will be held on September 30 at 7:00 PM on Zoom. To register, use this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqceCsrzstGNwG2WGclYQvBkQQKsfhQgvv
Her work considers the ambivalent and contradictory representations of Latino baseball players, seen both as a threat and as an example of the American Dream. Professor Rudolph sheds new light on the ambivalences of mainstream American media and fans towards Latinx culture.
Her book also analyzes the #PonleAcento (put an accent on it) campaign that was unveiled by Major League Baseball in response to LA Dodgers infielder Adrian Gonzalez’s push to properly display Latinx player’s names on their jerseys.
Dr. Rudolph will discuss her work and also participate in a Q&A.
Dr. Jennifer Domino Rudolph is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College.
Goldstein Lecture Series: Roberto Lovato, Unforgetting
On Wednesday, October 7 at 7 PM, the Goldstein Program in Public Affairs is hosting a book talk with Roberto Lovato for his new book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Grans, and Revolution in the Americas.
Register in advance for this webinar using this link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bNNrnexpTqOEGD3fr99iUQ
In Unforgetting, Roberto interweaves his father’s complicated history and his own with first-hand reportage on gang life, state violence, and the heart of the immigration crisis in both El Salvador and the United States. In doing so he makes the political personal, revealing the cyclical ways violence operates in our homes and our societies, as well as the ways hope and tenderness can rise up out of the darkness if we are courageous enough to unforget.
According to Kirkus Reviews, “Journalist and activist Lovato delivers a memorable indictment of the civil war in Central America that drove a wave of migration to the U.S.—and spawned gang warfare in the new country…A provocative, revealing work of journalism that explains gang behavior but does not idealize it.” Learn more about Unforgetting here.
Lovato will both discuss the book and read passages from it, followed by a Q&A.
About Roberto Lovato
Lovato is an educator, journalist and writer based at The Writers Grotto. A recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, Lovato has reported on the drug war, violence, terrorism in Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Haiti, France and the United States.
Latinx Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15, and celebrates the multicultural and multiethnic nature of Latinx, Latino and Hispanic-identified communities.
Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.
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