Research Cluster

The Latin American Studies Research Cluster aims to build on existing faculty strengths at UCI and to establish the structural foundation for a vibrant community of scholars and students interested in Latin America. We are invested in creating new venues for research and collaboration among faculty in different disciplines and institutional structures for increased offerings and coordination of curricula at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We will also bring a range of speakers to campus, from speakers that can appeal to a broad audience and draw attention to the vitality of Latin America in the current global conjuncture to speakers that can expose faculty and graduate students to significant new directions in research on Latin America.

Thanks to funding from the UCI Humanities Commons we will be bringing the following speakers and film directors (through the Illuminations series) to campus during the 2015-16 academic year.

FALL QUARTER

• Robin Derby, Associate Professor of History – UCLA
  
  Robin Derby's research interests include the Caribbean (esp. the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico and Cuba), Latin American political regimes, authoritarianism, state terror, U.S. imperialism, popular religion, and cultural history. Her current research explores rumors about demonic animals in the central frontier of Haiti and the Dominican Republic as a form of sorcery and historical memory.
   
• I Wonder What You Will Remember of September, dir. Cecilia Cornejo (Chile/U.S., 2004)
  
  This is an experimental documentary that interweaves fading childhood memories, parents’ recollections of the September 11, 1973 coup d’état, and post-­?9/11 conversations of the filmmaker with her daughter.

• Fibra Óptica (Fiber Optics) dir. Francisco Athié (Mexico, 1997)
  
  Fibra Optica is a political thriller in which a journalist (Roberto Sosa) investigates the murder of a union leader. Contemplates the pervasiveness of electronic communications in the neoliberal era, while exploring urban space and exposing political corruption.

• Chuck Walker, Professor of History, UC-Davis and Director of the Hemispheric Institute on the America
  
  Professor Walker’s research interests include Latin American social, cultural, and intellectual history; Peru and the Andes; the history of catastrophes and natural disasters (earthquakes); the Tupac Amaru Rebellion; Truth Commissions.
   
• En el País de No Pasa Nada (In the Country Where Nothing Happens) dir. Mari Carmen de Lara (Mexico, 2000)
  
  This movie is a romantic dramedy in which a high placed official pursues an extramarital affair while arranging the exportation of contaminated milk, paralleled by counterplots carried out by his wife, his actress lover, and her cabaret colleagues.