News

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.

CLACS is pleased to welcome Gabriela Wiener, Peruvian author and journalist, to Berkeley as a Visiting Writer.

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/

Alice Taylor, a Graduate Affiliate for 2022-23, and C. Darius Gordon, who was an affiliate in 2021-22, have a new article with Professor Amilcar A. Pereira in Comparative Education Review. Their research examines connections the relationship between Black social movements in Brazil and the United States over the last century.

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.

Antonia Mardones Marshall, a 2022 CLAS Summer Dissertation Fellow, discusses the disparity between the overwhelming victory of the call for a new Constitution in Chile and the nearly as strong rejection of the initial draft put out by that country's constitutional convention.

Read "Chile’s Constitutional Process: What Went Wrong and How to Move Forward" on the CLAS Blog

Professor Rebecca Herman's new book, Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America, is now available in hard copy form from Oxford University Press and other outlets.

She spoke about the book in a conversation with Professor Margaret Chowning and Kyle Jackson on September 28.

See the full press release in Berkeley News.

More than $12 million in new federal grants will drive dramatic expansion of UC Berkeley programs focused on international and regional studies, with benefits for both students and scholars, campus leaders announced today.

Applications are now open for funding for Research Working Groups.

Working groups comprised of UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and students who gather regularly to discuss and share research on topics of mutual interest. CLAS provides funds and other support for group meetings, events, and other activities. Groups can be formed based on any given country, region, topic, or discipline related to Latin America, and have covered a wide range of subject matter. See past groups from 2021-22 and 2020-21

The Center for Latin American Studies is pleased to have again been named a National Resource Center and a Foreign Language and Area Studies Grant Recipient by the U.S. Department of Education for 2022-25.

A new blog by Laura Álvarez López, a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Linguistics, is available on the CLAS Blog.

Professor Álvarez López outlines a recent spate of legislation, some actually enacted, that seeks to limit or ban the promotion of gender-neutral language in Latin America. 

Francia Márquez made history as an AfroColombian woman advancing to the final round of Colombia's 2022 elections as a vice presidential candidate.

Running with Gustavo Petro, their Historic Pact for Colombia ticket received the plurality of votes at over 40%, and advances to the runoff election on June 19, 2022.

CLAS announces three funding opportunities, with applications due this Spring semester. 

Event & Conference Cosponsorship Grants: Funding for UC Berkeley students, faculty, staff, and researchers to organize conferences, lectures, and cultural events. Applications are due 4/15 for fall 2022. More information here.

Jun q'olb'elb'il te kyiy / Greetings to you all,

Looking for a course for Spring 2022? CLAS has collected a list of Berkeley courses with Latin American content: https://clas.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/spring-2022

If you have comments or suggestions for more courses to be included in the list, please write to clas@berkeley.edu. 

The CLAS Community Library is now available for your browsing. Visit CLAS and take home one of our collection of books on and about Latin America. The Community Library is available during normal CLAS business hours, 9 am - 4 pm Monday through Thursday (donation suggested). 

Every academic year, CLAS cosponsors lectures, conferences, and events organized by UC Berkeley faculty, students, and staff.

Events must be organized by students, faculty, staff, or researchers affiliated with the university, must take place on campus (or virtually, hosted by a Berkeley account), and must be open to the public. Funds can be used towards honoraria, technical expenses, production costs, space rental, and/or transportation (food/refreshments are not allowed).

Proposals for Spring 2022 are due on October 15th. 

Valeria Ramírez Castañeda discusses a new approach in Colombia that takes on the goal of "objectivity" which has for so long isolated scientific practice from its social context. 

Read "Construyendo Ciencias para la Paz: Experiencias interdisciplinarias desde Colombia"

Daniel Payares Montoya, a consultant at the World Bank and former researcher at CLAS, discusses the impact of the pandemic on employment in Latin America, and argues for forward-looking policies for the region after Covid-19. Read "The Future of Work in Latin America."

It is with great pleasure that we announce Professor Natalia Brizuela as the new director of the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS). Director Brizuela’s appointment will begin on July 1, 2021.

The Center for Latin American Studies is organizing a new calendar, the Latin American Community Calendar, for events about Latin America and Latinx communities in the U.S., across the Americas, and around the world. This calendar is intended to be a resource for events across campus, and is not limited to CLAS events. 

Katie Sharar lives in Tucson, Arizona, and for nearly 20 years has worked in Arizona, Texas, and Mexico to support people in migration on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. For the CLAS Blog, she examines the impact of a Trump administration policy using pandemic concerns to overturn the rights of migrants, and argues for a more humane asylum system and border policy.

Visual and performance artist and scholar Laila Espinoza writes about using her art to draw attention to the continuing violence against women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where nearly a thousand victims of feminicide have been reported since 2010.

It is with great pleasure that we announce Professor Rosemary Joyce as the new Interim Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies. Director Joyce's appointment will last January 1 - July 1, 2021.