Latin America: Research and Teaching
Fellowships
In addition to regular University fellowships, our program offers multi-year support through the Mellon Fellowships in Latin American History. Chicago students can also receive summer research travel funds from the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (FLAS/Title VI) and Tinker Foundation Field Research Grants. Long-term research fellowships in Latin American history are available through Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, and the Social Science Research Council. In recent years, Chicago students have been very successful in obtaining these fellowships.
Since 1995, the Andrew Mellon Foundation has provided fellowships for students in Chicago's Latin American History Program. These three-year awards (in years 3-5) offer generous support for dissertation research and writing. Every year, the Mellon fellows from Chicago, Harvard, and Yale come together to present their work in progress. Faculty members serve as discussants, and distinguished scholars from Latin America offer guest lectures. These conferences have become a great success, providing invaluable opportunities to discuss new research, exchange ideas, and meet new colleagues.
Teaching
Graduate Students who have completed their coursework may serve as teaching assistants for undergraduate History, Latin American Studies, and Latin American Civilization courses, as well as in the Study Abroaad Program (currently in Buenos Aires, soon moving to Oaxaca). More advanced students may apply to create and teach their own undergraduate courses in the History Department (under the Von Holst program or with a Mellon fellowship). Advanced graduate students are also elegible to be preceptors (undergraduate thesis advisors) in the History Department, the Latin American Studies Concentration, and the Committee on International Relations. Preceptorships are also available in the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) and the Master of Arts Program in Latin American Studies. History graduate students at the University of Chicago have also received temporary teaching appointments at various Chicago-area colleges and universities.
Research Resources
Centers and Programs
Center for Latin American Studies
Program for Mexican Studies Research, publishing and inter-regional academic exchange supported by the Mexican Studies Program engage Mexicanists and other Latin Americanists at the University of Chicago and their colleagues throughout the world. The majority of students and faculty are in the History and Anthropology Departments, but the strongly interdisciplinary dialogue includes political scientists and sociologists as well as economists, business people, journalists, NGO representatives, and those in the humanities. Principal issues in Anthropology range from language and culture to intellectual property rights, cultural hybridization, and the public sphere in the context of rapid globalization. The Department of History has a long and serious trajectory in Mexican studies, particularly in terms of economic history, social movements, and cultural and intellectual history. Current faculty interests range from the constitution of community in the colonial period, social and political developments in the Mexican revolution, to diverse interests in the public sphere and the state. Specialists in other departments deal with democratization's effects on the state, immigration and globalization-related themes. Graduate student workshops develop cutting edge topics, including, for example, indigenous territoriality, colonial visual texts and the semiotics of modern Latin American urban space.
The Mexican Studies Program at the University of Chicago's Center for Latin American Studies began in April 1991 with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The study of Mexico and of US-Mexican relations has a venerable history at the University of Chicago, dating back to Robert Redfield's pioneering anthropological work in the 1920s. Nonetheless, Hewlett Foundation support for Mexican studies helped to make the 1990s a decade of unparalleled productivity in which 46 dissertations and 71 master's theses on Mexican and US-Mexican topics were written. This represents roughly 60 percent of all Latin American History dissertations written at Chicago. Also, since 1995, 17 major conferences have been organized and 65 speakers delivered presentations. As a result, the University's efforts in Mexican and US-Mexican studies are internationally recognized.
Libraries
Latin American Microfilm Collection
Latin American Music Collection
University of Illinois-Urbana Library
Off-campus Resources
Hispanic American Periodicals Index
Handbook of Latin American Studies
Archival Resources to be added soon!