Dr. Kanellos will comment on the termination of the Mexican-American Raza Studies Program in the Tucson Unified School District and the banning of dozens of books used in the program. He is the founder of Arte Público Press , the largest Publisher of Latino/a literature in the U.S. Several Arte Público Press books, including the award-winningChicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, are on the banned list of books. Dr. Kanellos will compare recent events in Tucson to other efforts to ban books.
Proudly sponsored by The Department of Spanish & Portuguese
Nicolás Kanellos has been professor at the University of Houston since 1980. In 1996, he became the first Brown Foundation Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. In 2001, the University of Arizona awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2008, he was elected to the Spanish Royal Academy of Literature, Arts and Sciences. He is founding publisher of the noted Hispanic literary journal The Americas Review (formerly Revista Chicano- Riqueña) and the nation’s oldest and most esteemed Hispanic publishing house, Arte Público Press. Arte Público Press is the largest, non-profit publisher of literature in the United States. Recognized for his scholarly achievement, Dr. Kanellos is the recipient of many awards including the 1988 Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature presented by the White House. Kanellos has written or edited many books. His monograph, A History of Hispanic Theater in the United States: Origins to 1940 (1990), received three book awards. His Hispanic Literature of the United States: A Comprehensive Reference (2005) was named an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice. His latest book, Hispanic Immigrant Literature: El Sueño del Retorno (2011), won the PEN Southwest Award for Non-Fiction. Dr. Kanellos is the director of a major national research program, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Heritage of the United States, whose objective is to identify, preserve, study and make accessible hundreds of thousands of documents written in those regions that have become the United States from the colonial period to 1960.
