October 2024 Newsletter

Dear Latin Americanist Community,

All of us at the LAI hope you had an excellent summer. We have much to share as we get ready for the new academic year. For many of our Latin Americanist faculty, the summer started with a trip to Bogota, to present at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) conference. The LAI was able to support colleagues attending the LASA meetings thanks to our Title VI grant from the Department of Education. The LAI also awarded 9 summer FLAS fellowships to UCLA students learning indigenous languages and Portuguese, and 24 field research fellowships to graduate students who traveled far and wide throughout Latin America collecting data for their projects. Also, at the beginning of the summer, our Outreach Program held a workshop on children’s literature in Latin America with the participation of nearly 20 K-12 teachers. Authors Antonio Ramos Revillas, Mariana Llanos and Fabiola García-Rubio offered presentations on how to write children’s books and led exciting hands-on activities with the teachers.

Before I give you details on the excellent event lineup for this fall, please mark your calendars for the LAI’s reception, scheduled for October 24 at 4 pm in the Palms Court area of Bunche Hall. We will send confirmation soon!

Here are a few highlights of events we are organizing this fall. Sociologist Luis Ortiz will present in October via zoom on Paraguay and globalization. His presentation inaugurates a collaboration between the LAI, FLACSO-Paraguay and the Universidad Nacional in Asunción. We resume the Pacific World Research Network, a collaboration of the LAI with the Asia Pacific Center and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, on October 31st with a presentation by Professor Kristie Patricia Flannery (Australian Catholic University) on her new book Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World. Details are available here. Professor Flannery will also hold a graduate research workshop on the issue of “Doing Transregional Historical Research: Archives and Other Challenges” with a focus on Southeast Asia and the global Spanish empire.

I am pleased to share a contribution to the LAI blog by Leandro Rodríguez, Chief Financial Officer of the journal Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society. The LAI recently renewed its financial support for this open access international journal, dedicated to the study of knowledge production in Latin America and the Global South. Finally, check out the blog post of Verónica Zavala, coordinator of the LAI’s Outreach Program, on the successful Mexico & Colombia: Interconnected Musica Histories, Genres, and Traditions workshop, held last spring on campus.