about the center

Under the stewardship of historian James Green and anthropologist Matthew Gutmann, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at Brown saw remarkable and far-reaching transformations in the last five years.  As a result of my predecessors’ dedication and effort, this is an exciting time for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown. 

Throughout its history, CLACS has been committed to developing a dynamic 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 exciting activities on critical issues in the Americas, including globalization, democracy, urban violence, entrepreneurship, the environment, indigenous peoples and knowledge, diasporas, development, health, public policy, and governance. 

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 few 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 New England Festival of Ibero-American Cinema (NEFLAC).  Many Brown graduate and undergraduate students have been selected for Fulbright grants in Latin America and the Caribbean, and each year over 60 undergraduates study abroad in the region.  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: Professor Ruben Oliven is the CLACS Cogut Visiting Professor this academic year as he was in 2009-2010.He is also a professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Currently at Brown he is teaching Urban Latin America and will be teaching The Making of Modern Brazil in the spring semester. His research interests are urban anthropology, revival of tradition, national and regional identities, popular cultures, popular music, symbolic meanings of money and Latin America.
  • 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 September 2011.
  • Study Abroad in Cuba:  During the fall 2011 semester, a group of Brown students will travel to Havana, Cuba to study identity and society, literature and the arts, politics and public culture, and the social history of Atlantic Cuba at the Casa de las Américas, Cuba's premier research institution.               

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.

Richard Snyder

Director, CLACS

Professor of Political Science and International Studies