In celebration of Bilingual Advocacy Week, a talk by Dr. Kim Potowski will explore “Spanish in the U.S.: Myths and Realities” at 7 p.m. April 14, in the Old Main Room of the Bone Student Center.

The event is free and open to the public.

Potowski is a professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and director of the Language in Contact (LICO) Research Group. Her research focuses on Spanish in the United States and its connection to identity and promoting social justice.

Her talk will look at some of the principal characteristics of Spanish as it is spoken in the United States, which has one of the largest populations of Spanish-speakers in the world.

A prolific scholar, Potowski is the author of Intra-Latino language and identity: MexiRicans in Chicago and Language Diversity in the U.S.A.  as well as the co-author of El Español de los Estados Unidos and Heritage language Teaching: Research and Practice.

Watch her Ted Talk on No Child Left Monolingual.

The talk is sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; the Latin American and Latino/a Studies program, the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Teaching and Learning, the National Center for Urban Education, and the Student Association for Bilingual Education.