Collective Care: Lessons from Latina Health Activism Across the 20th Century

Natalie Lira will present a public lecture titled “Collective Care: Lessons from Latina Health Activism Across the 20th Century". Lira is an associate professor in the Department of Latina/o Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the codirector of the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab, which studies the history of eugenic sterilization in the United States. She is the author of Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1910-1950s (University of California Press, 2021). The book documents how political concerns over Mexican immigration—particularly ideas about the low intelligence, deviant sexuality, and inherent criminality of the "Mexican race"—shaped decisions regarding Mexican-origin youth's treatment and reproductive future.