Initiatives

Founded in 1983, Brown University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) is a leading undergraduate National Resource Center internationally recognized for its research and teaching on Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean. With over 100 faculty affiliates who include preeminent Latin Americanists, particularly in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, environmental studies, history, literature and political economy, CLACS is the largest area studies center at Brown. Brown’s distinctive undergraduate program, renowned for its open curriculum and collaborative style of teaching and learning, foster the rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship and faculty-student initiatives that form the core of its program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Over the next four years, CLACS plans to enrich the program’s strengths in regional initiatives on Brazil, the Caribbean and Mexico, while cross-cutting teaching and research on these areas through thematic faculty-student initiatives: (1) Democracy, Governance, and Violence; (2) Indigenous Peoples and Knowledges; (3) Health and Sciences.

REGIONAL INITIATIVES

Brazilian Studies

Brown’s Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies has an international reputation for outstanding teaching and research, and is a leader in K-12 teacher training on Brazil. CLACS plans both to strengthen its ongoing Brazilian Studies programs and to lead cutting-edge research on the civil sphere in Brazil through such projects as a Ford Foundation-funded, inter-university consortium on civil society in the Americas.

Caribbean Studies

Haitian Studies at Brown has grown exponentially in the last four years through its new two-year Haitian Creole language program, the Medical School’s increased collaboration with Université d’Etat d’Haiti, the exceptional holdings on Haitian colonial materials at the John Carter Brown Library, and CLACS outreach programs with the Providence Haitian community. CLACS’s goal is to enhance it program to become the flagship institution for Haitian Studies in the U.S. CLACS has also developed new projects focused on Cuba, such as a study abroad program at Cuba’s premier research institution, Casa de las Américas. Brown will augment its Cuba study abroad program to include health care and the arts.

Mexican Studies

Brown University has 31 faculty members who specialize in Mexico and Mexican immigrants in the Unites States. CLACS will to continue to develop its Violence in Mexico project as well as its Indigenous Peoples and Knowledges initiative with a focus on ancient Mesoamerica and contemporary Oaxaca.

THEMATIC INITIATIVES

Democracy, Governance and Violence

Democracy, Governance and Violence is a faculty-student initiative that seeks to develop an intellectual cluster to examine the meanings of the new Latin American and Caribbean political moment for democracy. As part of this initiative, CLACS will organize a series of workshops in which students and faculty will present their own research, invite outside speakers, and participate in roundtable discussions on this issue. This will be followed by a two-day conference at Brown titled Comparing Inequality and Drug Trafficking in Brazil, the Caribbean and Mexico, organized by Caribbeanist and political scientist Anthony Bogues and anthropologist Matthew Gutmann.  

CLACS also plans to organize a conference on the theme of democracy and violence that will be held in Mexico and invite Latin American scholars. CLACS will oversee the organization and publication of an edited book volume based on these conferences that will address urgent, contemporary issues related to democracy and violence in Latin America and the Carribean. In order to enhance postsecondary outreach and further extend linkages abroad, CLACS will organize, in partnership with the Anthropology Department of the University of São Paulo, The Third International Conference on Anthropology and History at Brown in September 2010. This joint effort will create an international dialogue with scholars working on race, gender, ethnicity, identity, and sexuality from an historical and anthropological perspective.

For the purposes of extending undergraduate teaching on this topic, anthropologist Kay Warren will develop a new component in her innovative course “Violence and the Media” on labor migration and human trafficking from Latin America. This will include working collaboratively with undergraduates in a project to acquire and translate materials on transnational labor migration, testimonial accounts from Latin American sources and legal cases that involve the prosecution of criminal networks that recruit labor migrants. All these materials will be available to students in both Spanish and English.

Bibliographer Patricia Figueroa will work closely with faculty and students engaged in this initiative to acquire new books, media and other materials on this topic for the library. A portion of the films in the Ibero-American Film Festival will engage this topic and involve the public in roundtable discussions following the films.

The Indigenous Peoples and Knowledges Initiative

The Indigenous Peoples and Knowledges Initiative brings together faculty and students to examine comparatively the legal recognition of indigenous peoples, indigenous rights struggles, and the local knowledges produced through these experiences and movements. CLACS plans to continue a distinguished lecture series begun in AY 2008-09 on the relationship of indigenous ethnic identity to current realities across the Americas. This lecture series will be expanded to include invitations of indigenous leaders and scholars from Latin America, policymakers associated with the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and indigenous artists and musicians.

Building on the lecture series, CLACS will organize a conference titled Indigeneity in the Americas: Transforming Epistemologies, which will bring together indigenous intellectuals from Latin America and international junior scholars working on Latin American indigenous peoples to consider from various angles (sociological, political, cultural) how engaging with indigenous systems of knowledge might transform not only the academy but also the world beyond it.

Professor of Theatre Arts Patricia Ybarra, will develop a new course that will analyze theater and performance in the Americas, which engages ecological, political, gender and land rights issues particular to native, indigenous and first nations people in the hemisphere. Brown University Library will work with faculty and students involved in this initiative to expand library holdings on this topic.

Health and Sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean

Health and Sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean is a faculty-student initiative with the goal of extending and developing LACS in the sciences, particularly Bio-Medicine, Geological Sciences, Environmental Studies and Science Studies. Beginning in the spring of 2011, former president of Chile Ricardo Lagos will lead a series of workshops on global climate change. CLACS also plans to organize a workshop and then a conference on the theme of Converging Technologies and the New Political-Epistemics in Latin America that will bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers, scholar-activists and students to explore the political, economic, social, legal and ethical implications of new sciences and technologies and the ways that political-epistemics emerging from social movements in Latin America have shaped this terrain.

Additionally, Professor of Medicine Amy Nunn will organize a conference titled Fighting HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean. This conference will explore the experiences of and responses to HIV/AIDS epidemic in LAC, highlighting lessons learned from Brazil and Argentina, both of which have had progressive responses to the AIDS epidemic, as well as challenges related to emerging epidemics in countries such as Guatemala and Honduras.

Professor of Family Medicine Timothy Empkie will develop an online course to complement his seminar Health of Hispaniola and his web-based “Hispaniola Timeline”, to make an interdisciplinary analysis of the development of Haiti and the Dominican Republic available to a wide audience, including traditional students at Brown, Tougaloo College (a partner college of Brown), and other universities; and non-traditional (adult) students in the U.S. and abroad. As with the previous two initiatives, Brown University Library will acquire new materials in connection with the conferences and curricular development related to Health and Sciences in Latin America.