The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) brings together faculty and students across the University in interdisciplinary and interdivisional research, teaching, scholarly events, and public engagement related to this vital region of the world. CLACS provides a forum for the amplification of faculty findings, stimulates interdisciplinary intellectual exchange, nurtures regional inquiry among undergraduate and graduate students, educates the University community on vital regional issues, facilitates deep and sustained exchange with Latin American institutions, and creates a stimulating community for Latin American visitors, faculty, and students in Chicago.
MAPH students can pursue a specialization in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) by taking Latin America- and/or Caribbean-focused courses offered across disciplines. Students can select courses from among dozens that are listed and cross-listed by CLACS each year.
Selected Faculty
Sample Courses
Histories From the Margins (LACS 31650) Winter 2026
Scholars have long been interested in the question of how to reconstruct the lived historical experiences of "ordinary," marginalized, or otherwise "unknown" people. Doing "history from below" marked an important turn in social history that generated new questions about and approaches to reconstructing the lives, histories, and cultures of people who were consigned to the peripheries of (or absent altogether from) historical records. While radical, this approach over-emphasized binary relations of power. Thinking about "histories from the margins," however, opens up new questions about how power, oppression, and marginalization cut across intersecting categories-such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and colonialism. This course will adopt a thematic and broadly comparative approach from scholarship on the Americas (including Latin American and the Caribbean) and western Europe to explore how scholars have conceptualized the social worlds of everyday people-including microhistory, capitalism, slavery, colonialism, race, class, gender and sexuality, and inequality. (Deirdre Lyons)
Blackness in Latin America: Popular Culture, Performance and Visual Art, and Discourses of Mestizaje (LACS 34550) Winter 2026
The course examines how blackness has been both constructed and reimagined across Latin America and the Caribbean through an exploration of the performance and cultural practices of Afro-Latin communities. We treat popular and performance traditions as a crucial terrain for discerning how Black people across the region navigate discourses of racial democracy, mestizaje, multiculturalism, and racial fraternity even as they faced the realities of racism in individual nations. The course examines imaginations of blackness in hip hop, reggaetón, rumba, folklore, carnivals, and visual art in varied sites such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. Grounded in Black and Diaspora Studies, the writings of Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. Dubois, Paul Gilroy and others will serve as theoretical touchstones for placing these forms and lived realities in diasporic context. We will also engage the work of noted and upcoming Black artists from the region. (Danielle Roper)
Tropical Commodities in Latin America (LACS 36106) Winter 2026
This colloquium explores selected aspects of the social, economic, environmental, and cultural history of tropical export commodities from Latin America-- e.g., coffee, bananas, sugar, tobacco, henequen, rubber, vanilla, and cocaine. Topics include land, labor, capital, markets, transport, geopolitics, power, taste, and consumption. (Brodwyn Fischer)
Traducción y pirateria en El mundo colonial (LACS 32810) Spring 2026
Translation and piracy can both involve the strategic appropriation of language, knowledge, or property. This course analyzes the relationship between translation and piracy in the creation of foundational works of colonial Latin American literature. As students read texts about colonial encounters, conquests, piracy, and conversion, they will become familiar with early histories of translation in Latin America and a variety of early modern, modern, and post-colonial translation theories. (Larissa Brewer-Garcia)
Visit CLACS’ course page for an extended listing of classes and descriptions.
Latin American and Caribbean Studies Specialization
The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Specialization allows students to structure their coursework and thesis around the study of Latin America and the Caribbean within MAPH. Students who complete the following requirements will receive a Latin American and Caribbean Studies transcript notation:
- MAPH Core Course (Foundations of Interpretive Theory)
- 1 foundational course in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
- 3 additional graduate-level courses in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
- Demonstrated language proficiency in Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Kreyol, or a relevant indigenous language as determined by passing the Practical Language Proficiency Assessment, completing a course beyond the second-year level (above 20300) in a regional language, or having received a high school diploma or undergraduate degree from an institution in which the language of instruction is one of the languages listed above.
- A major research project (typically an MA thesis) on a theme or topic related to Latin America and/or the Caribbean
- Presentation of academic work at the Latin American History Workshop or Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean
The LACS Specialization pairs well with the MAPH Two-year Language Option. More information about each requirement is provided on the CLACS website. Please direct any questions you may have about specializing in Latin American and Caribbean Studies to maph-support@uchicago.edu.
Recent Latin American and Caribbean Studies Thesis Projects
"The Colonial Gaze and the Commodified Narrative: Why The New York Times Cannot Accurately Represent Revolutionary Movements – A Comparison of Zapatista Communiqués and U.S. Visual Media"
Alejandra Paz Mendoza, MAPH '26
Advisor: Sergio Delgado Moya
"Informal Anarchism In Mexico City: Everyday Practices of Resistance"
Luz Maria Montiel, MAPH '26
Advisor: Sergio Delgado Moya
"Calderón de la Barca y el espacio queer de la comedia aurisecular: Un estudio de Afectos de odio y amor y La hija del aire"
Hadel Ringel, MAPH' 25
Advisor: Miguel Martinez