Dr. Maura Toro-Morn
- About
- Education
- Awards & Honors
- Research
Biography
Prof. Toro-Morn was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She migrated to the United States in the early 1980's to pursue graduate work in the Midwest. She has a been a member of the Bloomington/Normal community for over twenty years. She has devoted her academic career to researching Latinx/a/o immigration to the Midwest and to teaching about Immigration, Latinos in the U.S., and gender issues.
Current Courses
109.001Introduction To Latina/O Studies
391.001Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Seminar
461.001Readings In Sociology
Teaching Interests & Areas
Maura I. Toro-Morn joined the faculty of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in the early 1990's. Currently, she is the Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program. In a recent interview for ISU’s Daily Vidette she was quoted as saying; “for immigrants like myself, we will always be connected and will exist in a transnational field, always seeking a connection to our new home." She is currently devoted to teaching courses in the Sociology department that overlap with Latin American and Latino Studies. She is also a core faculty member for the Women and Gender Studies Program where she teaches both undergraduate and graduate classes.
Research Interests & Areas
As a scholar in the fields of immigration and sociology, she has always been curious about why people move, how, and what are the consequences of their movements thus she has devoted a significant part of her career to studying migrations in a global perspective. She began to address the complexities of migration while researching the social class and gender dimensions of Puerto Rican migration to Chicago. She is part of a generation of scholars that has taken on that task of exploring the gender specific qualities of contemporary migrations, work that has contributed to the historicizing Latino immigration to the Midwest and to making the experiences of women immigrants across diverse geographies visible. Her work is also relevant because it contributes to analyzing how gender and race systems of inequality intersect in the recruitment and deployment of Latina women workers.
Through both her research and teaching, she is devoted to investigating, teaching, and working toward equality for people on issues of ethnicity, race, gender, and social class. This commitment was recognized in 1998 when Toro-Morn was awarded the David Strand Diversity Award.