![Cecilia Menjivara headshot](/media/college-of-arts-and-sciences/sociology/stories/menjivar.png)
President of the American Sociological Association speaks at SCU
Cecilia Menjívar lectures on the Continuum of Violence in the Lives of Central American Women Asylum Seekers
On February 22, 2022, the department welcomed the inaugural Global Migrations Lecture by Dr. Cecilia Menjívar, the Dorothy L. Meier Chair in Social Equities and Professor of Sociology at UCLA. Dr. Enrique Pumar, the Fay Boyle Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology, served as moderator for the event. The inaugural lecture in our Global Migrations Lecture Series provided an overview of the continuum of violence that Central American women asylum seekers experience in their countries of origin, during the journeys through Mexico, and upon arrival in the United States. Violence in the lives of these women sometimes manifests in physical assaults that we tend to associate with interpersonal violence. Dr. Menjívar, however, focused her talk to reveal the various forms of violence that are made possible by structures, institutions, and policies. This lecture invited reflection on our conceptualizations of violence more broadly. This lecture and ongoing series was co-organized by the Bannan Forum and the Global Migration Studies Program at SCU.