Thursday Sept. 24^th  from  4:00 pm – 5:30 pm | at The Hall Center for Humanities

The Department of History invites you to attend our third annual National Hispanic Heritage Month lecture featuring Dr. Sergio González, Associate Professor of History, Marquette University. González will present, Sanctuary in the Heartland: Histories of Immigrant Justice in the Midwest.
 

For decades, Midwestern churches, neighborhoods, and local leaders have played a pivotal role in creating social movements to protect refugees and defend immigrant communities. Drawing on extensive archival research and oral histories, this lecture traces the history of sanctuary from the 1980s to the present, revealing how questions of migration, faith, and belonging have shaped the region. By examining these struggles in historical context, the talk invites audiences to reconsider the Midwest’s pivotal place in the national story of immigrant justice. 

Bio:
Sergio M. González is Associate Professor of History at Marquette University. A historian of twentieth-century U.S. migration, labor, and religion, his scholarship explores the intersections between faith and social movements as well as the development of Latino communities in the U.S. Midwest. He is the author of Mexicans in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017) and the co-editor of Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics Since 1945 (New York University Press, 2022) with Felipe Hinojosa and Maggie Elmore. His most recently published book, Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin (University of Illinois Press, 2024), explores the relationship between Latino communities, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century Midwest. In 2025, Strangers No Longer was awarded the American Catholic Historical Association’s John Gilmary Shea Prize for the most original and distinguished contribution to the history of the Catholic Church.
 

González’s current research examines the contentious battles over sanctuary movements in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, exploring the pivotal role people of faith have played in developing contemporary social movements for immigrant and refugee justice as well as the opposing political movements that have risen to criminalize these forms of solidarity. That work has produced two forthcoming manuscripts with co-author Lloyd Barba – Sanctuary in America: How Activists Defied the Federal Government—And Why It Still Matters (Oxford University Press, 2026) and Sacred Refuge: New Histories of the US Sanctuary Movement (New York University Press, 2026) – and will be the focus of current González’s research sabbatical.

Along with his academic scholarship, González is a committed public historian. He's engaged in several public humanities projects, including co-writing and co-hosting The Look Back, a social studies show for middle school students on PBS Wisconsin; serving as a founding member of the Wisconsin Latinx History Collective; and, co-writing and co-hosting Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State, a limited podcast series with Axis Mundi Media.

The Department of History is extremely grateful for the support from our generous sponsors: The KU Center for American History, The Hall Center for the Humanities, The KU Commons, The Department of Museum Studies, The Department of English, The Department of American Studies, Department of African American Studies, The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Impact and Belonging, and the Department of Communications.