Cornell University Registrar

Program Description

The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) offers a graduate minor in Latin American studies. Resources include courses, library facilities, a video lending library, faculty and graduate weekly seminars, publications, summer travel grants, and access to research networks. Research and training foci include historical processes, political and economic change, the processes and consequences of agricultural development, urbanization, population issues, science and technology policies, and United States-Latin American relations.

Students who minor in Latin American studies integrate specialized training in area studies with advanced study in a particular discipline. Faculty members may supervise the research of degree candidates who focus on Latin American topics and may serve on the student's special committee.

Graduate Minor Field Requirements

The graduate minor in Latin American Studies is earned by completing the following requirements:

1. The graduate student should select a member of the Graduate Field in Latin American Studies to serve on their special committee. 
2. Graduate students must comply with the Graduate School's Code of Legislation.
3. Complete the graduate concentration application form. Contact LACS to obtain the form.

While there is no specific course credit requirement for the Latin American Studies graduate minor, we encourage at least one semester of LATA 6000.

Faculty

Ernesto E. Bassi Arevalo

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: The configuration of geographic spaces, collective identities, geopolitical projects, and political allegiances in Latin America and the Caribbean

Judith A. Byfield

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: women's social and economic history in Nigeria

Ananda Irvena Cohen-Aponte

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: Racial formation, cross-cultural exchange, historicity, and coloniality in the visual and material culture of the Andes; legacies of colonialism in contemporary Latinx art

Liliana Colanzi

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: literatures of irreality in Latin American fiction, science fiction, horror, the fantastic, class, gender, race, animal studies, posthumanism

Raymond B Craib

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: I am a historian of modern Latin America with research and teaching interests in the intersections of space, politics, and everyday practice. My books include Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes (Duke UP, 2004; Sp. trans. UNAM, 2013); The Cry of the Renegade: Politics and Poetry in Interwar Chile (Oxford UP, 2016; Sp. trans. LOM, 2017); and Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age (PM Press/Spectre, 2022; Sp. trans. forthcoming, Prometeo, 2025). My home department is History and I have affiliations with Romance Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Latino Studies and work with students from a wide range of disciplines and with a particular focus on the history of modern Latin America and the intersection of history, geography, and social theory.

Maria Fernandez

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: electronic media art, Latin American art and architecture, critical theory and the intersections of these fields

Alexander S Flecker

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: community and ecosystem ecology, functional significance of biodiversity, stream ecosystems, tropics, conservation biology, sustainability science

Gustavo A. Flores-Macias

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: Latin American political economy

Carolyn Fornoff

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: environmental crisis in Latin America, Mexico and Central America, climate change, ecocriticism, posthumanism, animal studies, film

Maria Cristina Garcia

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: Latinos in the United States; (im)migration; refugees; asylum seekers; climate refugees

Miguel I. Gomez

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies

Vanessa M. Gubbins

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: Latin American literature of the Andean Region and Southern Cone, poetics and poetologies, critical theory, Andean and European philosophies, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminist theories, Third Cinema

John Stanley Henderson

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies

Viranjini P Munasinghe

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: nationalism, race and ethnicity, creolization and indigeneity, Asian American Studies, South Asian Diaspora, Labor and Political Economy of Plantation Societies, Historical Anthropology, Anthropological Theory, Comparison, Postcolonial Theory

Alex M. Nading

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: medical anthropology, environmental anthropology, Nicaragua, dengue fever, chronic kidney disease, science and technology studies, global health

Jose Edmundo Paz-Soldan

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies

Kenneth M. Roberts

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: Democracy, inequality, and political representation in Latin America; parties, populism and social movements.

Amanda Rodewald

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: population and community ecology, conservation biology, sustainability science, temperate and tropical landscapes, migratory birds, shade-grown coffee

Casey Schmitt

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: early America, Caribbean, human trafficking, colonization, illicit economies, Atlantic World

Irina Raquel Troconis Gonzalez

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: Memory Studies, Venezuelan Studies, Politics and Performance, Affect Theory, Visual Culture, Material Culture, Digital Humanities

Mildred Elaine Warner

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: local government service delivery, economic development, multigenerational planning, environmental sustainability, rural development, infrastructure, water

Wendy W. Wolford

• Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
• Concentrations: Latin American Studies: Latin American studies
• Research Interests: social movements in Brazil