Laura E. Gómez
Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism
Laura E. Gómez teaches Civil Procedure and Criminal Law in the first-year UCLA School of Law curriculum and has taught courses in law and society and the Critical Race Studies Program in the law school’s upper-year curriculum.
In recent years she has served as Interim Dean of the Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters & Science (2016-17), which is UCLA’s largest academic unit, and Vice Dean of UCLA School of Law (2013-2015). Gómez began her teaching career at UCLA School of Law in 1994 and also holds faculty appointments (without teaching duties) in UCLA’s Departments of Sociology and Chicana and Chicano Studies. After 12 years at UCLA, she returned to her hometown of Albuquerque in order to raise her young son amidst a large extended family. She was a professor of law and American studies at the University of New Mexico, served as Associate Dean of the law school (2007-09), and was a faculty fellow at the Robert J. Woods Foundation Center for Health Policy at UNM.
XO chats with Laura about her latest book INVENTING LATINOS: A NEW STORY OF AMERICAN RACISM, a timely and groundbreaking argument that all Americans must grapple with Latinos’ dynamic racial identity because it impacts everything we think we know about race in America. Take a listen.
