Emiliano Aguilar

Assistant Professor
History

Research Interests

"My research interests include the Latina/o Midwest, Postindustrial Communities, and Working-Class Histories of the Midwestern region in particular.

Related Courses Taught

HIST 30907 (Intro to Latina/o History); HIST 35650 (Latina/o Civil Rights Movements); HIS 30709 (Latinidad in Chicago and the Midwest) and two USems also covering Latina/o History.

Biography

Emiliano Aguilar is a political and labor historian of the United States, specifically the Latina/o Midwest. His manuscript-in-progress, Building a Latino Machine: Caught Between Corrupt Political Machines and Good Government Reform, explores how the ethnic Mexican and Puerto Rican community of East Chicago, Indiana navigated machine politics in the 20^th and 21^st centuries to further their inclusion in municipal and union politics. The project further outlines this inclusion’s costs (and paradoxes) for generations of residents and reformers. In grappling for political power and claiming rights to their community, these Latina and Latino residents renegotiated their place within the city, particularly under the threat of urban renewal and later deindustrialization.

His work has appeared in The Metropole, Belt Magazine, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s Blog, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, and the Indiana Historical Society Blog, among others. A chapter of his research appeared in Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest (University of Illinois Press, July 2022).