You are here

Latin American Studies Minor

Latin American Studies is an interdisciplinary field in which students design programs that reflect their particular interests. UL Lafayette offers a minor in Latin American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and an M.A. in History with a Latin American and Caribbean concentration. The minor in LAS enables students to combine study of a major field in the arts, humanities, sciences, or social sciences with a focused study of Latin American history, culture, and contemporary affairs. In addition to strengthening and deepening the Spanish major and adding expertise in Latin America to any major, it prepares students for graduate work and careers with a Latin American focus.

LAS faculty are drawn from departments throughout the university. In addition to teaching courses on Latin America in their respective disciplines, they provide advising for students engaged in Latin America-related work, and coordinate and promote the University's academic and cultural exchanges with Latin American institutions. They participate in the creation of public programs such as speakers and film series, and they work to provide cross disciplinary support for research and teaching related to Latin America.

The Minor

Courses on Latin America are regularly given at UL Lafayette in Geography, History, and Spanish, but any course, in any department, with significant Latin American content is considered an LAS course. The minor in LAS is intended to enrich students' major field with a secondary expertise that will permit them to function in Spanish speaking work environments and Latin American cultural settings. The LAS minor also prepares students for more advanced academic work on Latin America, or for fieldwork in the region. 

For students who wish to enhance their studies in a specific discipline with an in-depth concentration on a particular region or world area, the minor in LAS is an appropriate complement to humanities and social science majors such as Anthropology, Economics, History, Sociology, or Spanish. The LAS minor is also useful to students in fields such as Architecture, Agriculture, Biology, Forestry, or Wetlands Studies who may conduct research in Latin America or work cooperatively with Latin American firms. Finally, the minor in LAS is useful for students going into such professions as medicine, nursing, social work, and law, who will have significant professional contact with the Latino/Latina population in this country.

People

The Latin American Studies faculty is comprised of all members of the UL Lafayette research faculty, in all departments, whose work focuses on Latin America. Additional LAS courses are taught by faculty including Dr. Lisa Graley (English) and Kathleen Espinoza (Geography). If you are not listed here and would like to be, please contact las@louisiana.edu.

Leslie Bary (Modern Languages). Ph.D. Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley.
Latin American literary and cultural studies. Avant-garde discourse, modernisms, critical race theory.
Griffin Hall 443
337.482.6814
lbary@louisiana.edu

Julia Frederick (Honors). Ph.D. History, Louisiana State University.
Colonial Latin American history.
Judice-Rickels Hall
337.482.6700
julia@louisiana.edu

Francisco García-Rubio (Modern Languages). Ph.D. Spanish, University of Connecticut.
Early modern and colonial Spanish American literature and culture.
Griffin Hall
337.482.5453
francisco.garcia-rubio@louisiana.edu

Lena Oak Suk (History). Ph.D. History, Emory University.
Gender, cinema, and popular culture in modern Brazil.
Griffin Hall 538
333.231.6809
lenaoaksuk@louisiana.edu

Richard Winters (Modern Languages). Ph.D. Hispanic Linguistics, Indiana University.
Hispanic linguistics and dialectology, Latino cultures in the United States.
Griffin Hall
337.482.5439
rwinters@louisiana.edu