Suzanne Oboler

Suzanne Oboler is Professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College of the City University of New York. Prior to coming to John Jay, she taught at Brown University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is Founding Editor of the academic journal, Latino Studies (2002-2012). Her research and teaching interests center on Human Rights in the Americas, focusing on race, immigration, citizenship and national belonging. 

 Professor Oboler is author of Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States (1995) and numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, most recently "Latinx Belonging and Solidarity in the Twenty-First Century: (Re)Constructing the Meaning of Community in the Era of COVID-19"  (in N. Deeb-Sossa and J. Bickham Mendez, eds.  Latinx Belonging: Community Building and Resilience in the United States", and "Disposable Strangers: Mexican Americans, Latinxs and the Ethnic Label “Hispanic” (in A. Y. Ramos-Zayas and M. Rua,  eds. Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader).  She is editor of Latinos and Citizenship: The Dilemma of Belonging (2006), and Behind Bars: Latino/as and Prison in the United States (2009).  She is Co-Editor in Chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in Contemporary Politics, Law and Social Movements (2 Volumes; 2015). In 2005 she co-edited Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos (2005), and was co-editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latino/as in the United States, 4 Volumes.  

Professor Oboler lectures widely across the country and abroad, on issues related to Latinxs in the US, and the field of Latinx Studies in the United States, as well as  race and citizenship in the Americas.  She is currently conducting research in the areas of racism and immigration, refugees and belonging in the Americas.  In 2011 she was named Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at PUC, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.