OSU's Paloma Martinez-Cruz (Spanish/Portuguese), Theresa Rojas (English), and Inés Valdez (Political Science) in a Roundtable Discussion with Professor José Limón-- Director, Institute for Latino Studies, Julian Samora Chair in Latino Studies, and Notre Dame Professor of American Literature.
José E. Limón is a Notre Dame Professor of American Literature and a Fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies. Prior to his arrival at Notre Dame, he was the Mody C. Boatright Regents Professor of English and director of the Center for Mexican-American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. He is known to folklorists for introducing Western Marxist theory and post-colonial studies to the field, as well as early articles examining the conflicts of first-generation college students negotiating the academy, class and ethnic traditions, and activist commitments. His scholarship in Mexican-American culture and folklore has appeared in a wide disciplinary range of journals and in several books. The first Mexican Ballads, Chicano Poems: History and Influence in Mexican-American Social Poetry (University of California Press, 1992) won Honorable Mention for the Chicago Folklore Prize).Dancing with the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas (University of Wisconsin Press, 1994) won the 1996 American Ethnological Society Senior Scholar Prize. A third book, American Encounters: Greater Mexico, the United States, and the Erotics of Culture, appeared with Beacon Press in 1998. He has also edited the writings of Jovita Gonzalez, Texas folklorist and historian, in two volumes, Caballero: A Historical Novel (Texas A&M University Press, 1995) and Dew on the Thorn (Arte Publico Press, 1997). His latest book, Américo Paredes: Culture and Critique, appeared in 2012 with the University of Texas Press.
