Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
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Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies : Research Interests

Others

  1. Manuel S Leal, Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology of Lizards, Animal Communication
  2. Caroline Light, Feminist History, Race and Sexuality in the South, Southern Jewish History, Queer Theory

Faculty

  1. Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián, 20th Century Latin American Literature Caribbean and (Pen)Insular Avant-Gardes / Atlantic Studies / Visual Theories / Queer-Gender Theories / Colonialism / Ethical Philosophy
  2. Paul A Baker, Geochemistry of water and sediments. Climate and paleoclimate reconstruction. Strong interest in interdisciplinary studies in earth and ocean sciences, ecology, climate, anthropology, geography
  3. Christine D. Beaule, Archaeology (Anthropology), Latin American Studies
  4. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Currently I am working on two books entitled, Anything but Racism: How Social Analysts Limit the Significance of Race (with Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Hayward Horton) and White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology (with Tukufu Zuberi). I am also working on a project entitled, "We are All Americans! The Latin Americanization of Race Relations in the USA," where I explore the changing dynamics of racial stratification in the United States.
  5. Michaeline A Crichlow, Globalization, Development Studies, Postcoloniality, Nationalism/citizenship
  6. Leslie H Damasceno, Brazillian and Latin American Theater and Film, Brazilian Cultural Theory and Literature, and Cultural Theater and Film Theory.
  7. N. Gregson G. Davis, Greek and Latin Poetry; Francophone Caribbean Literature; rhetoric; semiotics; pragmatics
  8. Ariel Dorfman, Popular Culture and Globalization
  9. Mary W. Eubanks, Maize Evolution and Improvement
  10. Fernando R. Fernholz, International Development Policy, Public Finance, Economic Growth and Development, Debt, Program and Project Appraisal, Privatization and Regulation
  11. John D French, An historian of modern Latin America with a specialization in Brazil, my most recent book entitled Drowning in Laws: Labor Law and Brazilian Political Culture was published in 2004. I was on residential fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2005-06) and at the Kellogg Institute at Notre Dame (Spring 2007)to work on my book entitled "Lula's Politics of Cunning: From Trade Unionism to the Presidency in Brazil." I am also finishing on a book entitled "Globalizing Protest and Policy: Neo-Liberalism, Worker Rights, and the Rise of Alt-Global Politics" that reflects ongoing research labor and globalization. I have also organized an international research conference at Duke on 27-28 May 2008 on “Nurturing Hope, Deepening Democracy, and Combating Inequalities: An Assessment of Lula’s Presidency” with major funding from Duke and Brazilian sources.
  12. Esther Gabara, Esther Gabara received her PhD from Stanford University in 2001. Her main area of specialization is the relationship between literature and visual culture in modern and contemporary Latin America. Her research has examined photography in the Americas in terms of its impact on theories of ethics and aesthetics, the formulation of non-mainstream modernisms, and questions of race and gender. Her book, Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil, was published by Duke University Press in 2008. Her teaching in the departments of Romance Studies and Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University covers topics of Mexican visual culture and politics, Latin American modernisms, and contemporary urban cultural production in the Americas. She is currently working on a new book project on theories of fiction in contemporary artistic and popular visual culture, entitled "Non-Literary Fictions: Invention and Interventions in Contemporary Latin American Visual Culture."
  13. Gary Gereffi, Gary Gereffi's research interests deal with the competitive strategies of global firms, the governance of global value chains, economic and social upgrading, and the emerging global knowledge economy. His major ongoing research projects are:
    (1) industrial upgrading, global production networks, and decent work in East Asia, North America, and Eastern Europe;
    (2) analyzing the competitiveness of North Carolina industries in the global economy, utilizing a value chain perspective ;
    (3) engineering outsourcing and workforce development in the United States, China, and India;
    (4) a global value chain perspective on food safety and quality standards; and
    (5) an ongoing collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and other co-sponsors on clean (low-carbon) technologies and U.S. jobs.
  14. Margaret R Greer, Spanish Early Modern Literature and Culture, Women Writers, Text Editing
  15. Robert G. Healy, Land use policy, development policy, protected areas, tourism. Mexico and Canada
  16. Sherman A James, US Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Status and Health Care; Poverty and Health
  17. Pedro Lasch, I see my work as a consecutive set of acts and ideas that complement and interrupt the flow of the everyday. It’s a chain of routine-breaking routines. My role as an artist, researcher, educator, activist, cultural organizer, and producer can be understood as a cohesive whole, which develops within specific social situations and exists within and outside of conventional art settings. Presentations in museums, galleries, and academic contexts represent only a part of my overall production. A preoccupation with the theory and practice of a socially engaged art, which is rooted in daily exchanges, has led me to the formulation of an aesthetics based on public interventions, social interactions, games, and temporal rearrangements. The range of my projects encompasses anti-monuments, language games, artist's books, radio works, lunch events, experimental workshops, events, and activities, as well as more conventional work in the form of installations, video, photography, painting, printmaking, and drawing. Regular participation in the organization and production of cultural and social networks, such as art collectives like 16Beaver Group (NY) and various immigrant grassroots organizations is also a very significant part of my work. The circulation of my work in international circuits is a direct result of an ongoing engagement with the culture of cross-class cosmpolitanism.
  18. Gilbert W Merkx, I received my A.B. from Harvard University and my M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University. I have been a Fulbright scholar at the Universidad Nacional San Cristó bal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Perú; a visiting scholar at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and a visiting scholar at the Latin Amerika Institutet, Stockholms Universität, in Stockholm, Sweden. I have taught on the faculties of Yale University; Göteborgs Universität, in Gothenburg, Sweden; and the University of New Mexico, where I was Professor of Sociology and Director of the Latin American and Iberian Institute. At Duke University I am Professor of the Practice of Sociology, Director of the Center for International Studies, and Vice Provost for International Affairs and Development. As Vice Provost, I am responsible for general oversight of Duke's numerous international and foreign language and area studies programs, development of Duke's programs and partnerships abroad, and furtherance of the internationalization of the University as a whole.
  19. Walter D Mignolo, Global Coloniality, Critical Cosmopolitanism, Modern/Colonial World System
  20. Claudia Milian,
    • Twentieth Century U.S. Latina and Latino Literature and Cultural Studies
    • Contemporary Latin American Literature and Criticism
    • Contemporary African American Cultural Productions, Social Movements, and Identities
    • Critical Race Theory
    • New World Postcolonial Studies
    • Translation Studies
  21. Diane M Nelson, I began fieldwork in Guatemala in 1985 exploring the impact of civil war on highland indigenous communities with a focus on the more than 100,000 people made into refugees and 200,000 people murdered in what the United Nations has called genocidal violence. Since then my research has sought to understand the causes and effects of this violence, including the destruction and reconstruction of community life (Guatemala: Los Polos de Desarrollo: El Caso de la Desestructuracin de las Comunidades Indigenas CEIDEC1988). In A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (University of California Press 1999) I describe the relationship between the Guatemalan state and the Mayan cultural rights movement. When asked about indigenous organizing many Guatemalans call it "a finger in the wound." How do material bodies those literally wounded in 35- years of civil war, and those locked in the fear-laden embrace of sexual conquest, domestic labor, mestizaje, and social change movements relate to the wounded body politic? My work draws on popular culture like jokes, rumors, global TV, and subjugated dreams of a "new race" as well as contemporary theories of political economy, subject-formation, the post-colonial, memory, and ethnic, national, gender, and sexual identifications. It explores the relations among Mayan rights activists, ladino (non-indigenous) Guatemalans, the state, and transnational contexts including anthropologists. My new project grows from my interests in cultural studies and cyborg anthropology and explores science and technology development in Guatemala and Latin America more generally. I am focusing on laboratory and clinical research on vector and blood-borne diseases like malaria and dengue and the intersection of this knowledge production with health care in the midst of neo-liberal reforms and popular demands. In the summer of 2003 I began new fieldwork on this interest in Venezuela, while continuing my research in Guatemala.
  22. Jocelyn H Olcott, I work on feminist history of modern Mexico. My first book, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, explores questions of gender and citizenship in the 1930s. I am currently working on two book-length projects: a history of the 1975 UN International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City (under contract with Oxford University Press), and a biography of the activist and folksinger Concha Michel. I am also developing a long-term project on the labor, political, and conceptual history of motherhood in twentieth-century Mexico.
  23. Liliana Paredes, Sociolinguistic aspects of Bilingualism, Bilingualism in the Andes, Languages in contact, Spanish in the USA, Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Instruction, Testing and Assessment
  24. Emilio A Parrado, Broadly, my research entails the study of the interaction between social change and population processes with particular emphasis on Latin America. Most of my work falls into three categories: 1) marriage, employment, and fertility behavior, 2) international migration, and 3) the Latino population of the United States. Underlying these diverse areas there is a common interest in issues of inequality, development, and stratification. More recently, I have begun to investigate the relationship between gender, international migration, and HIV risks in Mexico. The specific aims of this project are to: (1) Compare prevalent sexual behaviors among Mexican men and women in Durham, NC and four sending communities in Mexico; (2) Identify and describe the impact of migration on the gender structures of labor, power, and cathexis among the Mexican population; (3) Model the gender and migration related determinants of sexual behaviors, including condom use, use of commercial sex workers, number of partners, sex outside of marriage, and male-male sexual encounters; and (4) Construct a data derived culture and gender specific model of sexual behavior to inform the development of HIV interventions for at risk immigrant groups. Data for the analysis will come from an "ethnosexual" survey of Mexican migrants collected in Durham, North Carolina and four sibling communities in Mexico, supplemented with in depth ethnographic interviews in the U.S. The combination of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies will provide culturally grounded and reliable information on gender, migration, and sexual behavior. I am also expanding my interest in migration to other areas in Latin America. I am currently conducting a study of migration from Paraguay and Peru to Argentina that investigates the role of gender, family strategies, and marco-economic crises in affecting migration decisions.
  25. Stuart L. Pimm, Species extinctions and what can be done to prevent them. The loss of tropical forests and its consequences to biodiversity.
  26. Karen Remmer, Latin America, Democratization,Economic Development, Military Governance
  27. Irene M Silverblatt, Irene Silverblatt, Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1981, researches the cultural dimensions of state- building and colonization in Latin America. She is particularly interested in the relation of gender, racial discourses, and historical memory to the construction and experience of power. As a Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, she will be writing a social history of Peru's political ideologies and the making of colonial Andean subjects. These concerns, combined with an interest in the history of anthropology, orient her next project on the emerging fields of Andean ethnography--in the United States and Peru--during World War II and the first decades of the Cold War. Her publications include Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (1987); "Imperial Dilemmas, the Politics of Kinship, and Inca Reconstructions of History," (1988), winner of the American Society for Ethnohistory's Heizer prize; and numerous articles.
  28. Orin Starn, I am interested in the themes of culture, history, and power, and specialize in Latin America, Native North America, and, more recently, sports and society. My latest book "Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last 'Wild' Indian"(W.W. Norton and Company, 2004) chronicles the story of this last survivor of California's Yahi tribe. A San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2004, "Ishi's Brain" explores questions about violence and conquest, the history of the West, and the relation between anthropology and indigenous peoples. Earlier, I did much of my work in the Andes of South America, mostly in Peru. I am currently co-editing a forthcoming collection of articles by prominent scholars about the new visibility of indigenous identity and politics worldwide (Indigenous Experience Today, forthcoming, Berg Press). An earlier book "Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes" (Duke University Press, 1999) recounts the history of a powerful rural movement that emerged in in the 1980s. Here I took up issues related to political violence and national identity, social movements and modernity, and gender and power as they have played out in the Andes. I'm also the co-editor of "The Peru Reader: History, Culture, and Politics," which has recently come out in a second edition from Duke University Press. My publications also include three books in Spanish, and a co-edited anthology about cultural politics and social protest, "Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest" (Rutgers University Press, 1997). I am now doing research for a book on golf and American society (and do a "Golf Politics" blog at: www.golfpolitics.blogspot.com). My writing about the history and politics of the sport has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, and South Atlantic Quarterly as well as being cited in the New York Times, USA Today, and other newspapers. My general theoretical interests include violence and memory; nationalism and ethnic identity;the history of anthropology; the anthropology of sports; activist and public anthropology; and cultural studies and postocolonial theory.
  29. Antonio Viego, Latino/a Literatures, Latino/a Studies, Critical Race Studies, and Gender & Sexuality

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