Dr. Christina Abreu has led the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies (CLLAS) at Northern Illinois University as director for several years, advancing a vision of the center as “community-engaged, student-centered, [and] a leader on campus.” During her time at NIU, she has worked to create a community grounded in Latino culture, scholarship, and the preservation of underrepresented Latino histories in the Midwest.
The daughter of Cuban parents, she grew up in West New York, New Jersey, surrounded by a Cuban American community during the 1980s and 1990s. Hoping to pursue a career in journalism, she initially attended Ursinus College in Pennsylvania to study Communication Studies. An advisor introduced her to American Studies, whose interdisciplinary approach and methodological flexibility appealed to her. That shift led to graduate study at Purdue University, where she earned a master’s degree in American Studies and began moving toward Latino Studies.
In her master’s program, Abreu was tasked with understanding the historical context and significance of a text of her choosing, and she selected Carlos Eire’s award-winning memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy. Engaging with the memoir gave her an opportunity to connect with her culture through an academic lens and deepened her interest in Latino Studies. She later earned her Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan and published her first book examining Cuban musicians and communities in Miami and New York City during the 1940s and 1950s.
Those commitments shape the center’s daily work. CLLAS is a research-focused academic center whose work depends on the participation of students and faculty. Undergraduate students, including those pursuing the minor in Latino and Latin American Studies or an undergraduate certificate in Latin American Studies, and graduate students in the center’s graduate certificate program, work alongside faculty on CLLAS’s flagship research initiative: the NIU Latinx Oral History Project. This project gives students the opportunity to engage with their families and communities through oral-history interviews. By digitizing those interviews, students and faculty are helping build a digital archive that documents Latino histories in the Midwest.
The Center for Latino and Latin American Studies also hosts the Treinta y Tres Conference, named after the 33 countries that make up Latin America and now entering its seventh year. Originally envisioned as a modest gathering of Latino Studies scholars, the conference has grown into a two-day forum where scholars, artists, authors, and students from around the world gather to preserve, promote, and expand Latino and Latin American scholarship. Dr. Abreu is particularly proud of this year’s conference because it represents Latino Studies in the current political and social climate. This year’s theme, “Rhythms of Resistance,” examines Latino and Latin American musical and cultural expression as forms of resistance. For the keynote, the conference has invited the authors of P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance to discuss the book and its relevance.
The theme of resistance also extends beyond the conference. Dr. Abreu spoke openly about the challenges facing CLLAS and similar centers in 2026. With increasing fearmongering directed at Latinos in the United States, there is greater hesitation around federal and external financial support which, in turn, leads to the deprioritization of Latino Studies in academia. A broader effort to merge or eliminate dedicated programs in cultural studies is also underway, and the director of CLLAS made her position clear: “Latino Studies is a field—a discipline. It has an origin, it has a historiography and a literature, it has a methodology. I think that is not always recognized still. There is still a resistance to acknowledge that.”
CLLAS has taken action to ensure the growth of Latino Studies at NIU through the introduction of its certificate programs, giving university students a chance to engage with the field while accommodating limited flexibility in their majors, and through efforts to attend high school recruitment events in Illinois to show students that Latino Studies can be part of their academic future.
In discussing the role Latino Studies should play in today’s universities, Dr. Abreu spoke of the importance of Latino Studies alongside fields such as history, gender studies, and philosophy, because it gives students the opportunity to encounter different perspectives and develop new ways of analyzing and understanding them. She believes that Latino Studies does not solely serve the needs of Latino/a students in universities; it also serves the broader population, including those who may find themselves working in communities with a concentrated Latino presence, where familiarity with cultural context could be the deciding factor in one’s success.
The director also expressed that scholars and centers in Latino Studies could partner with disciplines like STEM and Education rather than the more typical areas of History, English, and Sociology to grow the work being done in the field. She cited CLLAS’ jointly appointed faculty member in Psychology as an example of which she was particularly proud. This perspective is present in her pedagogical approach to Latino Studies as well, where she emphasizes the importance of integrating personal interests and unique training into lesson plans. In her own teaching of Introduction to Latino Studies, her syllabus derives much from her background in twentieth-century history and her personal interests in popular culture, race, sexuality, and gender. She explained:
“That is sort of the beauty of the field. That it is inclusive of all these different disciplines and methodologies. No one Latino Studies course is going to be the same because of that.”
When discussing what it means for CLLAS to be part of IUPLR, Dr. Abreu spoke about the importance of having an academic network where the exchange of ideas, perspectives, and experiences is at the core of every interaction. Through the cross-cultural scholarly collaboration that defines IUPLR, CLLAS is not only given a voice, but also the support of many scholars and institutions across the country working toward a common goal. The director of CLLAS also shared a deep interest in collaborating with the IUPLR-affiliated institutes across the Midwest on a joint oral history project focused on Midwestern Latinos, potentially with special attention to musical expression. She believes that oral history is a tool integral to documenting Latino history and commonly used across many IUPLR-affiliated institutes.
At the end of the conversation, Dr. Abreu shared some words for the IUPLR community: “We’re not a glamorous center, but we are small and mighty. We’re trying to do good, important work and we are excited and interested and open to collaborating with other institutions.” It is clear that, at its core, CLLAS is a passionate team committed to its community. With support from IUPLR, the center will continue advocating for the students at NIU and for Latino Studies.
By: Alex Taveras, IUPLR Research Assistant, ataveras2@ccny.cuny.edu
