Center for Latin American Studies

Overview

Established in 1968, the University of Chicago Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) brings together faculty and students across the University in interdisciplinary and interdivisional research, teaching, scholarly events, and public engagement related to this vital region of the world.

The Center for Latin American Studies:

• works closely with faculty to support their teaching and research, actively sponsors programs for visiting academics, and maintains a quarterly list of courses related to Latin America and the Caribbean
• administers academic programs, including BA major and minor programs and a graduate certificate for students across MA and PhD programs
• funds study/research and provides teaching opportunities for graduate students across divisions and programs
• promotes interdisciplinary research, education, discussion, and debate around myriad topics relevant to Latin America, through scholarly and public engagement programs.

A full description of CLAS programming is available at the Center’s website.

Graduate Certificate/Option in Latin American and Caribbean Studies

The University of Chicago is a premier institution for research, teaching, and graduate study in the histories, cultures, politics, economies, and languages of Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 50 faculty members from throughout the graduate divisions and professional schools of the University focus their teaching and/or research on Latin America and the Caribbean, offering a wide range of disciplinary and regional coverage.

Eligibility and Requirements

All students who are enrolled full time in a graduate degree program at the University of Chicago are eligible to apply for the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) certificate (or option, for students enrolled in MAPH). Students should submit a certificate/option application no sooner than two quarters prior to, and no later than the end of the first week of, the intended quarter of graduation. This certificate/option provides proof of area studies specialization and will be noted on the transcript; all courses may be double counted toward both degree requirements and the LACS certificate/option. All coursework completed for the certificate/option must be taken for a quality grade.

A certificate/option will be granted when an applicant has fulfilled all course requirements in their degree program and the following certificate requirements, explained in more detail on the CLAS website:

• 1 foundational course in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
• 3 additional courses in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
• Demonstrated language proficiency in Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Kreyol, or a relevant indigenous language
• A major research project (typically an MA thesis or doctoral dissertation) on a theme or topic related to Latin America and/or the Caribbean
• Presentation of academic work at the Latin American History Workshop or Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean or another CLAS-approved event (CLAS staff are available to assist with arrangements)
• In addition, doctoral students are required to demonstrate at least one year of active participation in the Latin American History Workshop or the Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Interested students are strongly encouraged to meet with the LACS program adviser as soon as they decide to pursue the certificate/option so that CLAS can provide guidance on requirements and monitor progress toward the certificate/option. Each MA applicant will meet with the program adviser to discuss their plan for completion of certificate/option requirements, cultivate their research interests, and identify a faculty adviser for the master’s thesis. At any point before, during, or after the completion of certificate/option requirements, all students are welcome to meet with the CLAS faculty director or the program adviser to discuss their goals and the relevance of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies certificate/option to their research.

CLAS Staff

Diana Schwartz Francisco | Assistant Instructional Professor, LACS Program Adviser
email: dischwartz@uchicago.edu
phone: 773.702.0707

Mario Pino | Program Manager
email: marioignaciopino@uchicago.edu
phone: 773.702.8420

CLAS Website

http://clas.uchicago.edu/

Affiliated Faculty

https://clas.uchicago.edu/about/people/affiliated-faculty

• Michael Albertus, Department of Political Science
  Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela
  Political conditions under which governments implement egalitarian reforms; political regime transitions and stability; politics under dictatorship; clientelism; civil conflict

  Fernando Alvarez, Department of Economics
  Argentina
  Dynamic general equilibrium models applied to asset pricing, search and insurance

  Jessica Swanston Baker, Department of Music
  Caribbean
  Contemporary popular music of and in the Circum-Caribbean; tempo and aesthetics; coloniality, decolonization; race/gender and respectability

  Maria Angélica Bautista, Harris School of Public Policy
  Chile
  Political, economic, and social consequences of state-led repression

  N. Tulio Bermúdez, Department of Linguistics
  Latin America, Caribbean
  Documentation and description of grammatical, historical, and typological aspects of indigenous languages of Latin America and the Caribbean, esp. Naso (Chibchan, Panama); verbal art (linguistic forms that are interpreted as salient, e.g., ideophones, puns, poetic couplets); multilingual expressions and experiences of Latinx and queer identities

  Christopher Blattman, Harris School of Public Policy
  Colombia, Africa
  Poverty, political engagement, the causes and consequences of violence, and policy in developing countries

  Dain Borges, Department of History
  Brazil, Caribbean
  Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American culture and ideas; intellectual history; history of the family

  Neil Brenner, Department of Sociology
  Latin America (collaborations with colleagues in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia)
  Cities and urbanization within the social sciences; environmental humanities; design disciplines and environmental studies; theoretical, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of urban questions; challenges of reinventing our approach to urbanization in relation to the crises, contradictions, and struggles of our time

  Larissa Brewer-García, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Caribbean, Andes
  Colonial Latin American studies; cultural productions of the Caribbean and Andes and the African diaspora in the Iberian empire; relationship between literature and law; genealogies of race and racism; humanism and Catholicism in the early modern Atlantic; translation studies

  Claudia Brittenham, Department of Art History
  Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras
  Art and identity in ancient Mesoamerica; intercultural interaction; materiality of art; the politics of style

  Chad Broughton, Social Sciences Collegiate Division
  Mexico, US
  Labor studies and trade and immigration policy; crime, justice and policing, and desistance from crime, with a particular interest in Chicago

  Leonardo Bursztyn, Department of Economics
  Brazil
  Role of social pressure and social norms in shaping important economic decisions; educational, labor market, financial, consumption, and political decisions in developing and developed countries

  Shannon Dawdy, Department of Anthropology
  Cuba, Mexico
  How landscapes and material objects mediate human relationships and how shared cultural experiences affect our perceptions of time (past, present, future); death, disaster, sensuality, and histories of colonialism and capitalism; pirates

  Frederick De Armas, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Spain, Cuba
  Literature of the Spanish Golden Age (Cervantes, Calderón, Claramonte, Lope de Vega), from a comparative perspective; has published two novels about Cuba, set before Castro and in 1960

  Sergio Delgado Moya, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Latin America, Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies
  Latin American and Latinx literatures and cultures during 20th and 21st centuries, art history of the Americas, consumer culture, media studies, migration, border studies, the literature and art of Greater Mexico, Brazilian literature and art, Chilean contemporary art and literature, experimental poetry, critical theory, conceptual art in Latin America, violence and sensationalism.

  Oeindrila Dube, Harris School of Public Policy
  Latin America, Africa
  Political economy of development; links between poverty and conflict; how institutions affect health service delivery and the spread of epidemics; how economic shocks affect violent conflict; whether the gender identity of leaders determines their tendency to engage in war

  Brodwyn Fischer, Department of History
  Brazil, Latin America
  Inequality and its persistence; informality, cities, citizenship, law, migration, race, slavery

  René D. Flores, Department of Sociology
  US, Latin America
  International migration, race and ethnicity, social stratification; social consequences of subnational restrictionist immigration policies in the US; determinants of perceived immigrant illegality; effect of non-ethnic factors on ethnoracial identity in Latin America; adaptation of Latino and Asian immigrants in the US using social media data

  Chiara Galli, Department of Comparative Human Development
  US, Mexico
  International migration, refugee studies, childhood, the life-course, law and policy

  Rachel Galvin, Department of English
  US, Latin America
  Twentieth and twenty-first-century poetry and poetics in English, Spanish, and French; comparative modernisms; hemispheric studies; US Latinx literature; wartime literature; multilingual poetics; the Oulipo; translation theory and practic

  Angela S. García, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, And Practice
  US, Spain
  International migration; law and society; race and ethnicity; urban sociology; social policy; consequences of socio-legal inclusion and exclusion for undocumented immigrants across the United States, Mexico, and Spain

  Edgar Garcia, Department of English
  The Americas
  Hemispheric literatures and cultures of the Americas, principally of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; indigenous, Latinx, and Chicanx studies; American poetics; environmental criticism; theory of law; intersection of poetry and anthropology

  Susan Gzesh, Social Sciences Collegiate Division
  Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador
  Inter-relationship between human rights and migration policy; the domestic application of international human rights norms; Mexico-US relations

  James Heckman, Department of Economics
  Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Brazil
  Inequality; social mobility; discrimination; skill formation and regulation

  Mary Hicks, Department of History
  Brazil, Black Atlantic
  Slavery and Emancipation; the Atlantic world; early modern capitalism; colonialism, race, gender, and sexuality

  Dwight N. Hopkins, Divinity School
  Cuba
  Contemporary models of theology; various forms of liberation theologies (especially black and other third-world manifestations); multidisciplinary approaches to the study of religious thought, especially cultural, political, economic, and interpretive

  Ryan Cecil Jobson, Department of Anthropology
  Caribbean
  Energy and extractive resource development; technology and infrastructure; states and sovereignty; histories of racial capitalism in the colonial and postcolonial Americas; relationship between modern energy regimes (e.g., plantation slavery, carbon-based fuels) and the modern political ideal of sovereignty

  Rashauna Johnson, Department of History
  Atlantic World
  Atlantic slavery and emancipation; nineteenth-century African diaspora; US South; urban and regional history; race, gender, and sexuality

  Robert Kendrick, Department of Music
  Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua
  Latin American music; historical anthropology; visual arts

  Alan L. Kolata, Department of Anthropology
  Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala
  Agroecological systems; human-environment interactions; the human dimension of global change; agricultural and rural development; archaeology and ethnohistory, particularly in the Andean region

  Emilio Kourí, Department of History
  Mexico
  Modern Mexico; agrarian studies; social and economic history of Latin America; the history of ideas; Cuba and the Spanish Caribbean; US Latino/a history

  Benjamin Lessing, Department of Political Science
  Mexico, Colombia, Brazil
  "Criminal conflict" (organized armed violence involving non-state actors who are not trying to topple the state); prison gangs' effect on state authority; how paramilitary groups use territorial control to influence electoral outcomes

  Ana Maria Lima, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Brazil
  Portuguese language; language pedagogy; Brazilian culture

  Victor Lima, Department of Economics
  Chile
  Monetary economics; social effects; unemployment effects of labor regulation

  Nené Lozada, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Peru, Mexico
  Spanish language; South American bio-archaeology; human osteology

  John Lucy, Department of Comparative Human Development
  Mesoamerican Culture and Languages
  Linguistic anthropology, Psychological anthropology, Mesoamerican culture and language forms; Social science theory and method

  Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Caribbean, Latin America
  Nineteenth-century Latin American literature; nineteenth- and twentieth-century Caribbean cultural history; relationships between cultural production and the formation of modern socio-political identities

  Deirdre Lyons, Department of History
  French Caribbean
  Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Caribbean history; French colonialism and empire; Atlantic worlds; history of slavery and emancipation in the Americas; post-abolition citizenship; cultural and social history; history of the family, gender, and sexuality

  Juan Diego Mariategui, Romance Languages and Literatures
  Hispanic Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Cuba
  Relationship between literary representation, politics, and space; theoretical connections between ecocriticism, critical disaster studies, and biopolitics; and the links between the Hispanic Caribbean and Latin America

  Luis Martinez, Harris School of Public Policy
  Colombia
  Political economy of development, particularly the relationship between taxation, accountability, and governance

  Miguel Martínez, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Latin America
  Cultural and literary histories of early modern Iberia and colonial Latin America; the ways in which early modern historical processes such as the printing and military revolutions, or the first globalization, contributed to a partial democratization of literary practices

  Amy Leia Mclachlan, Global Studies
  Colombia
  Politics of plant life in the Colombian Amazon; extractive botanical economies (rubber, cocaine, pharmaceuticals); ethnobotany and curing in the Uitoto diaspora; displacement, world-making, trauma, gender

  Alicia Menendez, Harris School of Public Policy
  Argentina, Latin America
  Development economics; education and health; labor markets; household behavior

  Eduardo Montero, Harris School of Public Policy
  Central America
  How institutions and culture affect development and development policy in Central America and Central Africa; development economics, political economy, economic history, and the intersections between these interrelated topics

  Salikoko Mufwene, Department of Linguistics
  Caribbean, Atlantic World
  Evolutionary linguistics (including the emergence of Creoles, the indigenization of European colonial languages, language vitality); Bantu linguistics; language contact in Africa and the Caribbean

  Sarah Newman, Department of Anthropology
  Mesoamerica
  Archaeology and ethnohistory; waste, refuse, and reuse; zooarchaeology; human-animal relationships; landscape archaeology; human-environment interactions

  Stephan Palmié, Department of Anthropology
  Cuba
  Ethnography and history of Afro-Caribbean cultures, with an emphasis on Afro-Cuban religious formations; practices of historical representation and knowledge production; systems of slavery and unfree labor; constructions of race and ethnicity; conceptions of embodiment and moral personhood; medical anthropology; anthropology of food and cuisine

  Kaneesha Parsard, Department of English
  Caribbean (British West Indies)
  Legacies of slavery and emancipation in the Americas, and particularly concerns how gender and sexuality structure race, labor, and capital; Black feminisms, transnational feminisms, and materialist feminisms; Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora, African American, and feminist and queer visual cultures; archives; property and inheritance; and the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds

  Mercedes Pascual, Department of Ecology and Evolution
  Latin America
  Theoretical ecology; infectious disease dynamics; ecological networks; spatio-temporal dynamics of infectious diseases in large cities of the developing world

  Pablo Peña, Department of Economics
  Mexico
  Empirical economics and human capital theory; use of large data sets to test economic theories of behavior

  François G. Richard , Department of Anthropology
  Mexico, West Africa, France
  Material histories of French colonialism and imperialism; French colonial presence in Mexico and its legacies in the present

  James Robinson, Harris School of Public Policy
  Haiti, Colombia, Latin America
  Political and economic development; root causes of conflict; relationship between poverty and the institutions of a society; how institutions emerge out of political conflicts

  Danielle Roper, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Peru, Colombia, Jamaica
  Contemporary racial and queer performance, racial formation, feminist activism, and visual culture in the Hemispheric Americas

  Mario Santana, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Latin America
  Twentieth-century Latin American literature, narrative, and film; literary historiography; literary theory (hermeneutics and reception, narratology, systemic and institutional approaches to literature); cultural studies

  Victoria Saramago, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures 
  Brazil, Latin America
  Twentieth- and twenty-first century Latin American literature, with a focus on Brazil; ecocriticism and fiction theory; theoretical approaches to the representation of forest and rural areas in Latin American fiction

  Diana Schwartz Francisco, Center for Latin American Studies/Department of History
  Mexico, Latin America
  Indigenous politics; the nexus between economic development and environmental change in Latin America; the history and politics of social science; race in the Americas

  Paul Sereno, Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy
  Argentina, Mexico, Chile
  Paeleontology; evolution; fossil record in Argentina

  Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, Department of Cinema and Media Studies
  Latin America
  Latin American cinema and media; nonfiction cinema and media; Third Cinema; cinema and labor; race and representation; useful cinema

  Susan Stokes, Department of Political Science
  Latin America
  Democratic theory and how democracy functions in developing societies; distributive politics; comparative political behavior

  Megan Sullivan, Department of Art History
  Brazil, Argentina
  Modern and contemporary Latin American art; abstraction; modernism in a global context; the relationship of aesthetic modernism and social and economic modernization outside of the North Atlantic; artistic and intellectual exchanges between Latin America and other regions over course of the twentieth century

  Christopher Taylor, Department of English
  Americas, British West Indies
  Hemispheric Americas in the nineteenth century; how the British West Indies were linked to worlds beyond the boundaries of the British Empire

  Mauricio Tenorio, Department of History
  Mexico
  Political and cultural histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

  Kris Trujillo, Department of Comparative Literature
  US
  Christian mystical tradition; modern citations of the medieval; Latinx literature; queer of color critique

  Gerdine Ulysse, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
  Haiti
  French and Haitian Creole language; language variation and language attitudes and factors influencing multilingualism and literacy development in Creolophone communities

  Austin L. Wright, Harris School of Public Policy
  Colombia
  Political economy of conflict and crime in Afghanistan, Colombia, Indonesia, and Iraq

  Alan Zarychta, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, And Practice
  Central and South America
  Politics of social services; public health and environmental policy; sources and effects of institutional reforms aiming to improve local service delivery

  Sj Zhang, Department of English
  Caribbean
  Seventeenth- through nineteenth-century archives of slavery and marronage in the United States and Caribbean; how resistance practices and flight from enslavement by Black and Native individuals in the Caribbean and North America shaped textual and visual production in the colonial period; constructions of gender, race, and forms of bondage before 1850

  Erik Zyman, Department of Linguistics
  Mexico
  Theoretical syntactician, research languages have included P'urhepecha and Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec