Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University

Bienvenidxs and welcome back to a new semester! We have some exciting events lined up this upcoming week.

🇸🇻
9/23: Yo soy Manuela: Screening, Conversation and Reception
Yo soy Manuela is a Salvadoran film inspired by true events, featuring Manuela, a woman facing an obstetric crisis during her third pregnancy after being left by her husband. Directed and scripted by Salvadoran cinematographer Fabricio Sibrán, known for his contribution to the documentary "Fly So Far" and the film "Encuentros", the screening aims to gather support for the film's final stages and foster discussions about the harsh reproductive restrictions women endure in Latin America.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd73LpYeUY5a1oOetU4d6XitLJAwJampHWw7VV2o3I5hC2pgg/viewform?pli=1

🇧🇷🇧🇷
9/24: Climate Politics & Climate Science: The Road to COP30
The upcoming event features Brazilian officials and a scientist discussing the crossroads of climate and science towards COP30. Panelists are Ana Toni, Climate Change National Secretary; Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, Climate and Environment Secretary; and Professor Johan Rockström from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-politics-and-climate-science-the-road-to-cop30-tickets-1010736850127?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

9/24: Racism in Brazil and the USA
Join Andrés Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations, Djamila Ribeiro in conversation with Author Ibram X. Kendi about the commonalities and distinctions between racism as it manifests in Brazil and the United States.
https://www.kjcc.org/event/racism-in-brazil-and-the-usa/

🌎
9/25: PUTINOIKA Book Launch with author Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi’s long-awaited new book PUTINOIKA is a multi-genre epic about frenzy and plague in the era of Putin and Trump. Inspired by the ancient Greek tragedies, PUTINOIKA unfolds in three-parts: Palinode, Bacchae, and Putinoika. PUTINOIKA insists that poets, philosophers, and lovers have the capacity to create on a scale greater than society’s capacity to destroy. Join us for a reading and conversation with author Giannina Braschi, preceded by welcoming remarks by Lila Zemborain and an introduction by Nuria Morgado.
Giannina Braschi
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/join-us-for-the-launch-of-giannina-braschis-latest-book-putinoika-tickets-1020197055857?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

CLACS is pleased to share the following Graduate-level courses by esteemed scholars Djamila Ribeiro and Jorge Castañeda this fall:

LATC-GA 2537-002 (cross-listed with SPAN 2966-001)
Djamila Ribeiro (PUC, São Paulo, 2024 Andrés Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations, KJCC, NYU)
Tuesday 2:00pm-4:30pm
53 Washington Square S, Room 404

LATC-GA 2531
Jorge Castañeda
Author and Journalist, Former Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Mexico
Monday, 2:00pm-4:30pm

Both courses are open to graduate students from all schools at New York University and doctoral students in the Inter-University Doctoral Consortium. Advanced undergraduate students at New York University may apply for some graduate-level courses. Course descriptions are available via our link in bio.

Contact [email protected] for more information.

Congratulations to all our graduating MA students! 🥳💜🧑‍🎓🫶

SWIPE for some pics from our events :) Thank you all for a wonderful semester! A very special thank you to everyone who helped make our programing possible 🥳💜🧑‍🎓☀️🍉⛱️ we wish you all a wonderful summer, and we hope to see you again in the fall

Photo credits to for the last two slides 📸

Meet one of our CLACS professors, Dr. Leo Douglas!

Dr. Leo Douglas is a Clinical Associate Professor at Liberal Studies. He is also the 2023-2024 Director of the Caribbean Initiative within NYU’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). He received his Ph.D. and an Advanced Environmental Policy Certificate from Columbia University. He is a past-president of BirdsCaribbean, the largest single international NGO focusing on the flora and fauna of the greater Caribbean region.

We asked Prof. Douglas, “What’s your favorite thing about being a professor at CLACS?”

“My favorite thing about being a professor at CLACS is interfacing with student experiences, stories, and scholarship rooted in the Caribbean – Latin American environmental activism and Afro-indigenous spiritual practices. Being surrounded by this has been both healing and an inspiration.”

Come to CLACS and learn with Dr. Douglas, one of the many professors dedicated to having our students get a nuanced perspective on the issues and topics central to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Language courses at CLACS are open to all undergraduate and graduate students from all schools at NYU. Next semester we will offer the following language courses:

Elementary Haitian Creole I
Intermediate Haitian Creole I
Elementary Quechua I
Intermediate Quechua I
Elementary Mixtec I (CUNY Mexican Studies Institute)
Elementary Nahuatl I (CUNY Mexican Studies Institute)

These courses are open to PhD students through the Inter-University Consortium program, and to undergraduate students at Columbia University and in the CUNY system. This includes all PhD programs, at Princeton University, The New School, Rutgers University: New Brunswick, Stony Brook University,Fordham University, and the CUNY Graduate Center.

This also applies to both undergrad and graduate students at Columbia University, and the CUNY system through the Mexican Studies Institute at Lehman College.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to the department at [email protected]

Join us this upcoming Monday for a special event! 🇵🇾🇵🇾🇵🇾 CineCLACS presents the screening of Heroínas del Movimiento (Heroines of the Movement), by NYU XE Student, Delicia Alarcon. This short film analyzes and explores the importance of studying and including Paraguayan History, specifically Movimiento 14 de Mayo in relation to Alfredo Stroessner’s Authoritarian Regime (1958–1989). Light reception to follow.

Archival research for this project was funded by the CLACS Tinker Field Research Grant

Monday May 13, 2024. KJCC Auditorium, 5:30pm
RSVP using the following link: https://events.nyu.edu/event/335551-cineclacs-heroinas-del-movimiento-heroines-of-the

Join us in congratulating our MA students who presented their Master’s Projects yesterday! Congratulations on your academic achievement!

Ana Camila Rios Molina, Mercosur Migration: An Approach to the Subjecthood of the Child Migrant

Monet Massac, Good Samaritan and Good Shepherd:” An Examination of the Humanitarian Tent Making Activities of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in Haiti (1943-1956)

Lei Edmonds, Afro-ascendencia: From Colonial Slavehood to Contemporary Sainthood in Harmonia Rosales, Fabiola Jean-Louis, and Firelei Báez's Interventions on the Afro-Diasporic Visual Legacy and Beyond

Kiana Paclibon, Circles of Care, Lived Fantasies, and Self-Archiving in Córdoba’s Kiki Ball Scene

Marlin Ramos, Heightened Aesthetics: Washington Heights 191st Tunnel, Public Art, and Gentrification

Next week! Rubén Albarrán of "Café Tacvba" at NYU

Wednesday, May 8, 2024 // 7:00pm-10:00pm
KJCC Auditorium (53 Washington Square South New York, NY 10012)

The event will be held in Spanish. Registration for this event is required.

RSVP: bit.ly/3WoMiuq

Presented by the CUNY Mexican Studies Institute at Lehman College (CUNY MSI), NYU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and NYU's Creating Writing in Spanish program.

Tonight’s event with Dr. Rosalva Aida Hernandez Castillo on Racialized Geographies in Mexico: Violence, Disappearance, and Militarization in Indigenous Territories, has been moved to online. RSVP at

Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Location: ZOOM
Time: 6:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. (NYC time)

RSVP: bit.ly/3whBKCF

Join us tomorrow as The New York City Latin American History Workshop (NYCLAHW) hosts the talk “The Birth of a Pleasurescape: Montevideo in the 1910s-1920s”, by Adrián Márquez (Stony Brook University) 🇺🇾

This event is free and open to the public. Pre-registration required. To register, use the link in our bio.

Meet one of our CLACS professors, Dr. Odi Gonzales!

Dr. Odi Gonzales is a Quechua native speaker, researcher, translator, professor and poet. He has published several scholarly books, and a trilingual dictionary in the field of Quechua language, Oral Tradition, Latin American literature, and many multilingual collections of poetry. In 1992 he received The Peruvian National Poetry Award “César Vallejo.” Since 2008, he has led the Quechua Language and Culture Program at New York University. He usually teaches as well Literaturas Prehispánicas y Tradición Oral Andina: Siglos XVI-XXI (Pre-Hispanic Literatures and Andean Oral Tradition: 16th to 21st Centuries), Antropología Lingüística Andina (Andean Linguistic Anthropology), and Introduction to the Andean Studies.

We asked Dr. Gonzales, what’s something insightful a student has shared that has stuck with you?: “Some students told me that my Quechua courses served as therapy for them.”

Dr. Gonzales is one of the many brilliant faculty members at CLACS supporting students in having a meaningful graduate experience.

Meet Rina Rossi! A first year student here at CLACS whose research focuses one reproductive autonomy and rights of Indigenous women and enslaved African women in the colonial Caribbean.

“I’m from NH & CA, and studied Political Economy & Classics at UC Berkeley. I want to teach Latin American & Caribbean Studies in the future, while also lawyering for reproductive rights. I loved how CLACS has opportunities to learn Haitian Kreyòl, as well as has many graduate groups centered around my interests and research. I also love the CLACS faculty!

“My thesis examines the use of abortifacients by Indigenous women and Enslaved African women in the Colonial Caribbean, as a mechanism to exercise reproductive autonomy and as a form of resistance against the cruelty of the colonial slave economy. I also analyze the current state of reproductive justice activism in countries with total abortion bans. This semester, I am interning at the global women’s rights organization MADRE and am a part of the Reproductive Justice Collective of NY.

Aside from that, I am a journalist who has been recently published in the Nation & Harvard Kennedy School Review, am working on a research study on healing resources for assault survivors, and practicing my Kreyòl and Italian! I love to dance, cook, listen to jazz, watch films, go to museums and cafés, curate outfits and explore my mixed (Dominican-Japanese) identity!”

We’re looking forward to seeing Rina’s research and efforts flourish during her time here at CLACS!

Join us this upcoming Thursday for the culmination of a multi-day cultural and academic event celebrating recent achievements in contemporary Dominican arthouse and docu-fiction cinema, featuring guests Victoria Linares Villegas and Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias, two of the most internationally successful Dominican film directors.

April 4, 2024
2:00pm: Reception with Dominican food in the Production Lab, 16 Washington Pl
3:00pm-4:15pm: Roundtable with directors Victoria Linares Villegas and Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias, moderated by Dominican singer-songwriter and writer Rita Indiana in the Production Lab, 16 Washington Pl

RSVP link: https://bit.ly/4aaj72j

Meet one of our CLACS professors, Dr. Pamela Calla!

Dr. Pamela Calla is a Bolivian anthropologist engaged with issues of gender, race, class, and state formation in Latin America. She is currently a clinical professor at CLACS and received the NYU Dr. Martin Luther King Faculty Award in 2016-2017. She co-created and coordinates the Feminist Constellations Platform, where activists and scholars can affirm their multiple and transnational feminisms, and the Working Group on Racisms in Comparative Perspective which contributes to the academic-activist debates on how best to fight racisms. She participated in the collaborative-research of the Red de Investigacion Acción Antir-Racista and contributed to the book Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas. From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash (Lexington Books, 2020) with the Chapter “The Difficulties of Connecting Anti-Extractivist and Anti-Racist Struggles in Contemporary Bolivia: The Weight of Patriarchy”.

Random fun fact about Dr. Calla?: “I was born in Animas, a mining town in the southern part of Potosi-Bolivia, located at an altitude of 4200 meters above sea level and where my hair would freeze because it was so cold in the winter.”

Dr. Calla is amongst one of the many CLACS faculty members looking forward to meeting new students and supporting them in their graduate journeys!

Meet Paulina Metseri (she/her), a first year graduate student from Mexico City! We asked her about her crucial research at CLACS on indigenous migrant children.

“My research topic is about the role of migration processes for indigenous children from Mexico to the United States concerning the educational inequality gap and the construction of political legitimacy in both countries. My research is a synthesis of 11 years of serving at an NGO, where I worked on the elaboration, coordination, and evaluation of educational projects. I learned so much about the strength of being in community; there is no greater personal achievement than sharing what you have and who you are with other people.
Me encanta correr, proximamente participare en una carrera de 10km en Brooklyn.”

From March 8 through September 22, 2024, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will present “Crafting Modernity: Design in Latin America, 1940–1980”, an exhibition that examines modern design in six countries of the region through more than 100 objects. This landmark exhibition gives us the opportunity to expand on how design evolved in Brazil since then through the seminar “Brazil Powered by Design”, which will take place on March 11, 1pm to 5h30pm, in NYU’s King Juan Carlos Center.

Through round tables with experts coming from Brazil, Europe and the US, the seminar will create an intergenerational dialogue. To learn more and to reserve your spot visit the RSVP link:

March 11, 2024: 1:00pm
RSVP link: https://bit.ly/3VagTv5

1st image: Antonio Bandeira (Brazilian, 1922–1967). 2nd São Paolo Museum of Modern Art Biennial. Poster for 2nd Biennial, Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo, Brazil . 1954. Lithograph, 39 1/8 x 27 1/2″ (99.4 x 69.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the designer. Digital image ©️ 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

2nd image: Roberto Burle Marx (Brazilian, 1909–1994). Ibirapuera Park, Quadricentennial Gardens, project, São Paulo, Brazil (Plan, detail five ). 1953. Gouache on board, 43 x 52 1/8″ (109.2 x 132.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Inter-American Fund. ©️ 2024 Burle Marx & Cia.Ltda

3rd image: Oscar Niemeyer (Brazilian, 1907–2012). “Module” Low Table . 1978. Painted plywood and steel, 9 1/2 x 75 3/4 x 19 3/4″ (24.1 x 192.4 x 50.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Architecture and Design Funds. Digital image ©️ 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

4th image: Lina Bo Bardi (Brazilian, born Italy. 1914–1992). Bowl Chair . 1951. Steel and fabric, 21 5/8 × 33 1/16 × 33 1/16″ (55 × 84 × 84 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Architecture and Design Funds. Digital image ©️ 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Calling all NYU Undergrads! Are you considering majoring in Latin American and Caribbean Studies? Join us this afternoon with CLACS Director, Dylon Robbins, to learn more about the major!

Via Zoom
5pm-6:30pm

RSVP: bit.ly/3IjlEL2

Image: Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico

Thank you to everyone who came to the book talk ''Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World''. A special thanks to author Sara E. Johnson for sharing her important research, and to La Maison Française of NYU for providing us with a space 👋🇫🇷✍️

Today! We are thrilled to host author Sara Johnson who will discuss how her new book, Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World. Encyclopédie Noire documents the work of Moreau de Saint-Méry, a late eighteenth-century Caribbean intellectual.

The book combines traditional academic chapters and experimental forms in its use of archival fragments and visual culture to tell the stories of the free people of color and enslaved women and men who enabled Moreau’s work.

Presented by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Institute of French Studies at NYU.

Today! We are excited to host Chilean vocalist, Claudia Acuña, in a discussion with Professor Patricio Navia (NYU CLACS). Claudia will share her her experience as an artist, songwriter, immigrant from Chile, and moving to this country.

Learn more: https://events.nyu.edu/event/330656-brown-bag-discussion-series-wind-from-the-south

End of semester vibes 💖
Students enrolled in Professor Pamela Calla’s course, Comparative Racisms in the Americas, end the semester in collective song ✨