As part of Crossroads Community Center’s yearlong “UA is Culture” initiative, The University of Alabama will be celebrating different cultures each month starting with observing Hispanic Heritage Month until Oct. 15.
Crossroads director Beverly Hawk said Hispanic Heritage Month offers students more than simply a look at another culture. It will also provide students with Latino perspectives on American culture and how preconceived notions of other cultures are changed through experience.
“We all have a lot of assumptions about each other before we meet one another, and when we meet one another, we come away with different experiences,” Hawk said.
One of the goals of Hispanic Heritage Month is to expose students to new cultures so they can learn to engage with people of other cultures in an increasingly globalized world.
“That’s how [the University gets] to be the big international University that we are,” Hawk said. “Our students can interact with people all over the world so that they are prepared for their global futures for their whole lives. That’s what college life is for.”
For students who come from different cultures, the salute to international culture is an effort to make them feel that their culture is appreciated and contributes to the makeup of UA’s culture as a whole.
“Observing [Hispanic Heritage Month] declares that the culture is a part of the school, people from that culture feel connected [to UA culture] and that they feel their culture is honored and respected,” Hawk said.
Haley Flanagan, a junior majoring in public relations and minoring in Spanish, studied in Spain during the spring. Hispanic Heritage Month is a chance for her to share her experiences with Spanish culture with other students.
“I really want to promote different cultures because I had such a great time [in Spain],” Flanagan said. “I want to show other people that experience.”
In conjunction with Hispanic Heritage Month, Crossroads is partnering with other campus organizations to promote Latino culture through film screenings, panel discussions and other events.
Discussion topics for Hispanic Heritage Month will include “Intersections of Queer and Hispanic Identities,” “The Effects of HB 56 on Women and Families: One Year Later” and “Reflections on Culture, Health Care and Spirituality in Inquitos, Peru.”
Crossroads graduate assistant Juan Pablo Black Romero came to the University from Ecuador and said these types of discussions will give students a better grasp of the issues facing the Latino community, particularly issues like immigration.
Students will also be able to engage with Latino culture through the lenses of documentary films. The Women’s Resource Center, College of Education, and Department of American Studies will screen “Precious Knowledge,” a documentary about the elimination of ethnic studies programs in Tuscon, Ariz., and the fight to keep these programs alive. There will also be a screening of “Romantico,” a documentary about a Mexican musician who returns home after years of playing in San Francisco only to find that to support his family he must return to the United States.
The Women’s Resource Center’s monthly Everywoman Book Club will also have a Latino focus. There will be lunch and a conversation with author Lila Quintero Weaver about her book, “Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White,” which is about her upbringing in a racially segregated Alabama after her immigration to America from Argentina.
For more information on Hispanic Heritage Month and a schedule of events, visit crossroads.ua.edu.
