The Kansas Latin Americanist

From the Director
Over the past dozen years, support for area studies has been wavering nationally. During the fall of 2021, the situation seemed more dire than ever, with threats of more cuts to our already overworked staff right when we were about to apply for the next four-year round of US Department of…
The Center Wins $2.1 Million in National Resource Center and Foreign Language Area Studies Grants for 2022-26
We are excited to announce that the University of Kansas Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education both to be a designated Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and to provide Foreign Language and…
The Center Wins Award from the KU Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
The center very proud to win a $10,000 award from the KU Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) for being “an exceptional learning community that lifts each member and advances society.” The money is intended to support of our campus-wide programs and initiatives,…

Center Supports Urarina Indigenous Digital Project in Peruvian Amazon
Bartholomew Dean (Professor, Anthropology), Brian Rosenblum (Librarian and co-director, Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities) and Sylvia Fernández (University of Texas–San Antonio, former postdoctoral researcher at the IDRH) presented their collaborative digital research project on…
Indigenous Miskitu Migration: The Case for Asylum, by Laura Hobson Herlihy
A KU CLACS Summer 2022 Faculty Travel Award provided me with the opportunity to study Central American Indigenous migration to the US. I focused on the Nicaraguan Miskitu people migrating to the U.S. and originally planned to complete research in the coastal capital of Puerto Cabezas (Bilwi),…

Krueger Paraguay story
Krueger Paraguay story
Hed: Art offers a moment of humor, hope
LAWRENCE – Michael Krueger’s art is brightly colored and funny, but, like his MAD magazine inspirations, there is a serious subtext of interpersonal, international politics behind the floating cubist…

Dylan Bassett Capitalizes on Faculty Travel Award to Drum Up Partnerships in Brazil
With the help of the Center’s “Faculty Travel Award to Build Latin American & Caribbean Partnerships”, Prof. Dylan Bassett traveled to Salvador, Brazil to record new compositions with internationally renowned percussionists, Giba Conceição and Mario Pam, the latter of whom is the musical…
Faculty Research Travel Grants Prove a Good Investment in Garibotto’s Psychoanalysis Project
In the past two years, Verónica Garibotto received two faculty travel awards from CLACS to advance her research on psychoanalysis, intersectionality, and reproductive justice in Latin America.
Based on this research, she has published the co-edited volume, Psychoanalysis as Social…

Adesoji’s travel to Brazil
My prior travel experiences to various countries around the world had exposed me to study with Brazilians who shared with me many stories of the social and economic challenges their society was undergoing despite its numerous natural and human resources. This is why I seized on the opening to do…
Grants Awardees
We are very proud to have funded the following KU students for these awards.
Charles Stansifer Fellowship
The Charles Stansifer Fellowship is a $5,000 award to outstanding doctoral students graduate students who are working to complete their…
The Outreach Staff Has Been Busy!
Over the past two years, the center has held so many outreach activities funded largely by both NRC grants (2018-23, 2022-26) that we cannot list them all here, but here’s a taste of the kind of area studies public education the center staff has been carrying out.
Educator…

Waggoner colloquium
The Waggoner Research Colloquium is the signature event of the Center, to which affiliate faculty, graduate students, and the Advisory Board are invited. The 32nd annual Waggoner, November 3, 2023, was quite an entertaining success, as those of you attended attested. The theme was “…

Featured Graduate Student Research
Nate Blum
Nate Blum, Geography and Atmospheric Science graduate student and GTA, received a Tinker Field Research Grant to fund his project, “Food Sharing in Kaqchikel Communities.” Many of the Kaqchikel Maya continue to rely on subsistence agriculture to feed their families. Nate…

Mehrangiz Najafizadeh Receives the 2023 George and Eleanor Woodyard International Educator Award!
George Woodyard, Professor of Spanish & Portuguese (1966-2005), expert in Latin American theatre, and founding editor of the Center’s Latin American Theatre Review journal, was a pillar in CLACS. Upon his retirement, he and his wife, Eleanor Woodyard, established the George and Eleanor…

Student Awards
We are very proud to have funded the following KU students for these awards: Stansifer, Tinker, Herzfeld, and FLAS.
Charles Stansifer Fellowship
The Charles Stansifer Fellowship is a $6,000 award to outstanding doctoral students who are…

Outreach Events
Throughout the 2023-24 academic year, a wide variety of outreach activities filled the calendar for the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). These include CLACS events ranging from the weekly Merienda Series to joint activities with the other area studies centers, such as the…

2024 Graduate Research Celebration
Every year since 2007, the Center has showcased the Latin American and the Caribbean research performed by graduate students across the KU Lawrence campus. Initially, students met in the basement of Peter & Laura Herlihy’s home, then for a few years the celebration took the form of a…

Faculty Publications
Marta Caminero-Santangelo (English), “Imagining a Latino Heartland: Migrant Placemaking, Corridos of the Midwest, and Tomás Rivera,” Melus: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Summer 2023,…

Indigenous Responses to Climate Change conference, September 28-30, 2023
On September 28-30, 2023, the Center organized and hosted the “Indigenous Responses to Climate Change” conference with funding from the 2018-23 and 2022-26 NRC grants. Twenty-nine presenters from 10 countries participated. All but three of the presenters were either Latin American or Latinx, and…

Promises and Challenges of International Development in the Digital Age symposium, April 15, 2024
On April 15, 2024, the Center, Outreach International, and Unbound.org co-organized a symposium of regional and international Non-Governmental Organizations (iNGOs) to explore “Promises & Challenges of International Development in the Digital Age” on the KU campus. The 9 iNGO…