Latinx Carceralities Research Hub
About
The Latinx Carceralities Research Hub brings together scholars, artists, journalists, and activists to explore the myriad ways that Latinxs experience the carceral state as it weaves itself into the social fabric of institutions, communities, and relationships. The carceral state refers to the vast web of punitive institutions, policies, practices, and logics that are implicitly and explicitly sanctioned by the state and function to incapacitate criminalized populations and eliminate social threats. In many ways, the history of Latinxs in the United States is deeply intertwined with the history of the carceral state, yet these histories are seldom discussed and analyzed together. The Latinx Carceralities Research Hub aims to challenge this elision by supporting research and public facing work that not only shows how diverse Latinx communities have navigated the United States’ law enforcement apparatus but also how those interactions have fundamentally shaped ideas about race, citizenship, class, spatial location, gender, and sexuality for Latinxs and about Latinxs. At the same time, the work of the Research Hub also shows how Latinx people have organized to challenge the role of the state’s carceral capacity in their everyday lives. Eschewing totalizing and top-down narratives of repression, the Latinx Carceralities Research Hub traces how Latinx resistance to the carceral state has created opportunities for solidarity necessary for social change among different Latinx groups and between Latinxs and other marginalized groups. The Research Hub achieves this by creating spaces for knowledge production, intellectual exchange, creative intervention, and the dissemination of information about the impact of carceral systems on Latinx communities.
Marisol LeBrón is the Director of the Latinx Carceralities Research Hub.
The Latinx Carceralities Research Hub is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and housed at the The Humanities Institute, with support from the Department of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and the Humanities Division.
The banner image of bolt-cutters is from an original linoleum block print by Shaun Slifer.