Silvia Pedraza is a professor of sociology and American culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was born and raised in Cuba, from where she immigrated with her family at the age of 12. Her research interests include the sociology of immigration, race, and ethnicity in America, and the sociology of Cuba's revolution and exodus. Her work seeks to understand the causes and consequences of immigration as a historical process that forms and transforms persons and nations, as well as social revolutions' rupture with the past and attempt to create a different present. Professor Pedraza has been elected to numerous positions in the American Sociological Association (ASA) as well as the Social Science History Association. From the Latino/a Sociology Section of the ASA, she received a major award: the Julian Samora Distinguished Career Award. With a BA and MA from the University of Michigan, she has long been a Wolverine. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago, where she specialized in demography as well as stratification, and in Latin American studies. At the University of Michigan, she was also elected to various offices and is a two-time winner of the Excellence in Education Award. She was also honored by being inducted to the Golden Key Student Honorary Society. She is the author of three books and numerous articles. A few of her publications include: Political Disaffection in Cuba's Revolution and Exodus (Cambridge University Press, 2007); "Assimilation or Transnationalism: Conceptual Models of the Immigrant Experience," in The Cultural Psychology of Immigrants, edited by Ram Mahalingham (Lawrence Earlbaum, 2006); and "Women and Migration: the Social Consequences of Gender," Annual Review of Sociology (1991).