News & Updates

The 2025 Américas Award Winners, Honor Books, and Commended Titles have been announced! 

Watch the 2025 Winners Announcement featuring our special young announcers! 

Dear Latin Americanist & Caribbeanist Community,

In September, the U.S. Department of Education cancelled all National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships grants nationwide, stating that these programs are "inconsistent with Administration priorities" and supposedly "do not advance American interests or values." As a result, CLACS and the other NRCs at UC Berkeley will lose the fourth year of funding in the current grant cycle and will not be able to apply for future funding for these important programs. 

Dear CLACS community,

Welcome back! For those of us beginning this new academic year, the summer break is over. But the longer sunny days are still here, and as we enter the busy temporality of school time, I hope we are able to hold on to a slower paced time, to gauge our energies in these times of multi-faceted crisis.

CLACS is pleased to announce recipients of grants for Summer 2025 travel, study, and professional development.

Applications are now available for the 2025 CLACS Field Research Grants.

Field Research Grants are intended to provide graduate students with early experience conducting hands-on field research in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the opportunity to develop independent research projects. These grants are travel to and in-person field research in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In collaboration with our partners in the Latin American Indigenous Studies Alliance (LAISA: University of Utah, UCLA, and Stanford) CLACS was proud to host the opening workshop for the LAISA Programa de Fellows en Pedagogías de Lenguas Indígenas. In early August, we welcomed instructors of Maya Yucateco (Maayat'aan), Tu’un Savi (Mixteco), Mam (Tuj Qyol) and Hñähñu.

Fourteen graduate students were selected to receive Travel grants to present at the upcoming conferences for the Latin American Studies Association  and the Caribbean Studies Assocation. Congratulations to all! 

https://clacs.berkeley.edu/opportunities/conference-travel-grants

Applications are now available for the 2024 CLACS Field Research Grants.

Field Research Grants support graduate student research about Latin America and the Caribbean at the pre-dissertation level. Funding is generously provided by the Tinker Foundation through the Field Research Collaborative Program, and matched by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Since its founding in 1956, the Center for Latin American Studies has served as a bridge between the Bay Area and Latin America. In the past year, CLAS has undertaken a number of initiatives reorienting its work to emphasize the plurality and the complex geopolitics of what constitutes “Latin America.” Does it include territories subjected to colonization by England, the Netherlands, and France as well as Spain and Portugal?

Graduate students, do you want to share your academic passions while developing vital teaching and public speaking skills? 

ORIAS is seeking graduate student speakers interested in joining the ORIAS Speakers Bureau. This is a funded professional development opportunity to learn how to share your research with young audiences.

This fall semester, the CLAS Visiting Writer will be Daniela Rossell. She will be teaching a special seminar, "An Experimental Writing Workshop or: How to Say Yes"

When: Fridays: Oct 27, Nov 3, Nov 10, and Nov 17 | 10:30 am a 1:30 pm | Fall Semester 2023

More information and registration here: https://clas.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/special-seminar-daniela-rossell

Julie Chávez Rodríguez, who graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Latin American Studies in 2000, was named to lead the 2024 Biden presidential campaign.

Congratulations to Charles Briggs and Amy Lerman on being named as new fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Courses with Latin American Content, Fall 2023 

CLAS assembles a list of courses each semester that might be of interest to those studying Latin America. 

For more information on other courses, go to https://classes.berkeley.edu/

We the staff of the Center for Latin American Studies stand in solidarity with the 48,000 academic student employees on strike for a cost-of-living pay increase and additional demands that the University of California administration should honor, including disability justice, support for working parents, job security, and free passes for public transportation passes, among others. We cannot overemphasize how important graduate student participation is and has been for the Center of Latin American Studies.

Applications are now available for the 2023 CLAS Field Research Grants.

Field Research Grants support graduate student research about Latin America at the pre-dissertation level. Funding is generously provided by the Tinker Foundation through the Field Research Collaborative Program, and matched by the Center for Latin American Studies.

Applications are due at 11:59 pm on December 15, 2022.