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To help mark Latino History Month, Andrea Lepage and Melissa Birkhofer will continue Fredonia’s discussion of the relationship between the state and racial minorities that began in the spring semester.

The presentations are slated for Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 7 p.m., in Fenton Hall Room 105. The event is sponsored by Latinos Unidos and the Ethnic Studies Speaker Series and is free and open to the public.

Andrea Lepage	Melissa Birkhofer

During the spring, Tracy Martin, Treva Lindsey, Fredonia alum Mark Anthony Neal and Opal Tometti examined the tensions between police and African Americans that erupted in Ferguson and other areas. The fall semester’s speakers will emphasize that such tensions also affect Latino communities.

Andrea Lepage, associate professor of Latin American and U.S. Latina/o art history at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., will discuss the Strangest Fruit series of paintings by San Antonio-based artist Vincent Valdez (b. 1977) in a talk entitled “Official Threat: Vincent Valdez’s The Strangest Fruit.” The name of the series refers to the song made famous by Billie Holliday which decries the practice of lynching in the South. Lepage will introduce the audience to Valdez’s work and his commitment to resurrecting the history of Latino men who were lynched by those intending to leave them with “no foundation, no memory, or narrative.” By recovering a forgotten history, Valdez’s work confronts his audience with modern day stereotypes of the menacing young brown man to reveal the continuing threat from racial profiling.

Melissa Birkhofer, lecturer at Western Carolina University, is a comparatist whose interdisciplinary work draws on a background in English literature, Women’s Studies, Spanish language, and border theory. Her scholarly work includes examinations of Latina/o writers Norma Elia Cantú, Junot Díaz\ and Edwidge Danticat. Her Fredonia presentation is entitled “Breaking the Black/White Binary en los Estados Unidos: Police Brutality against Latinos in 2015.”