UIS Speaker Series presents "The American Roots of Latin American Boxing"

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield Engaged Citizenship Common Experience (ECCE) Speakers Series presents “The American Roots of Latin American Boxing” featuring Anju Reejhsinghani, cultural historian and assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

WHEN: Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 7 p.m.

WHERE: UIS Brookens Auditorium, located on the lower level of Brookens Library

DETAILS: In this presentation, Reejhsinghani provides a comparative transnational examination of the American roots of 20th-century boxing in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Hispanic Caribbean. Until at least the 1960s, boxing served as a tool for the Americanization of Latin Americans, Asians, and, to a lesser extent, Africans.

Reejhsinghani earned her bachelor’s degree in history at Princeton University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in history at the University of Texas at Austin. Reejhsinghani’s doctoral dissertation, “For Blood or for Glory: A History of Cuban Boxing, 1898-1962,” which she is revising for publication, examines the sport’s rise and popularization from the Spanish-Cuban-American War to the onset of the Cuban Revolution. She has contributed articles and book reviews to the Journal of Sport History and Journal of American Ethnic History and entries on Latin American athletes for the Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. A former top U.S. amateur boxer herself, Reejhsinghani is co-organizing an interdisciplinary symposium, Fighting Women, in Toronto this June.

This event is co-sponsored by the Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS), the History Club, and the Department of History.

For a list of other upcoming ECCE Speakers Series events and more information, visit http://illinois.edu/goto/speakerseries. All events are free and open to the public.