Message from the director

Under the stewardship of historian James Green, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown saw remarkable and far-reaching transformations in the last few years.  I speak for the entire faculty, students, and staff involved with the Center and Latin American and Caribbean studies at Brown in thanking Jim for his visionary and tireless work as Director from 2005 until the end of 2008.  It is an exciting if daunting challenge to follow him as Director of CLACS.

Throughout its history, CLACS has been committed to developing a partnership of students and teachers to discover, communicate, and preserve knowledge about Latin America and the Caribbean in the community and throughout the world.  Faculty-student collaboration in all aspects of Latin America and the Caribbean is a hallmark of the Center’s activities and initiatives, including conferences and lectures, research, teaching, outreach, library exhibits, “alternative breaks,” and study abroad.  As will be evident throughout the CLACS website, faculty and students at Brown are today engaged in an impressive range of activities on critical issues in the Americas, including diasporas; indigenous peoples and knowledge; health; and politics, democracy, governance, and sovereignty. 

With over 100 faculty, visiting scholars, and professional staff affiliated with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, CLACS also counts among its recent professors-at-large former Latin American Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil) and Ricardo Lagos Escobar (Chile), and in the last two years has organized lectures by President Evo Morales (Bolivia), President Leonel Fernández (Dominican Republic), and Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis (Haiti).

Both graduate and undergraduate students are involved in every aspect of the Center’s intellectual and outreach efforts, from planning lectures and conferences on “Change in the Andes” to mentoring Haitian students in local high schools to organizing the CineBrasil film festival.  Between 2006 and 2008, 14 Brown students have been selected for Fulbright grants in Latin America and the Caribbean, and each year over 60 undergraduates study abroad in the region.  Beginning 2009, graduate students are eligible for Tinker Field Research travel grants throughout Latin America and Iberia.

In light of pressing issues and events in Latin America and the Caribbean, in the year ahead CLACS will be organizing a number of activities, including:
  • Visiting Professors: Ruben Oliven, past-president of the Brazilian Associacao Nacional de Pos-Graduacao e Pesquisa em Ciencias Sociais, and an anthropologist from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre is the Cogut Visiting Professor for 2009-10.  Germán Guaygua, a sociologist and development specialist from Bolivia, was the first Sarmiento Visiting Professor, in residence at the Center during October 2009.
  • NEFIAC: Continuing the Center’s commitment to presenting Latin American films to the community, CLACS outreach coordinator, José Torrealba, will be the Executive Director of the New England Festival of Ibero-American Cinema, an unprecedented regional initiative which will bring cinema from the Iberian peninsula and Lusophone Africa as well as Latin America and the Caribbean to New England in Fall 2010.
  • Haiti Relief: In response to the devastating January 12 earthquake in Port-Au-Prince, CLACS and the Haiti Crisis Relief Committee have collaborated with many student and community organization to raise funds for and awareness about the disaster, including the Teach-in for Haiti and the Ayiti Cheri (Dear Haiti) Film Festival.
  • Study Abroad in Cuba: Adrian Lopez-Denis, a Cogut Center for the Humanities International Visiting Scholar, will take the third group of Brown students to Havana, Cuba for the fall semester 2010 to study at the Casa de las Américas.
  • FUTUROS: CLACS will present the fifth annual conference on from April 7th-10th, bringing together leading scholars on Latin America to discuss the following themes: Cuban Futures, Peruvian Modernities, Mexican Historical Memory, Spain & the Blog Narratives, Making It New in Spanish, Migrations & Translation, and Utopia & Apocalypse.

 

Please feel free to contact me or any of our Center staff about these activities and any other aspect of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown.

 

Matthew Gutmann

Director, CLACS

Professor of Anthropology