As the new director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Professor of Political Science Richard Snyder said he plans to implement new initiatives as well as to continue and build upon existing ones.
"Latin American and Caribbean studies is an absolute jewel at Brown," said Matthew Gutmann, vice president for international affairs and the former CLACS director. "(Snyder) can provide the leadership the program needs right now." Snyder, who began his term as director in July, is a well-known scholar in Latin American and Caribbean studies.
The programs, events and conferences organized by CLACS are geared toward both undergraduate and graduate students.
"These types of centers are important for enhancing graduate education," Snyder said, adding that as a graduate student, he benefited greatly from "robust area centers" similar to CLACS, which bring together people from multiple departments. "It's good to be exposed to people in other disciplines," he said.
This year, Snyder is reinstating "Politics, Culture, and Society in Latin America and the Caribbean," a graduate student colloquium that he launched a few years ago. These seminars allow graduate students from a variety of departments — including sociology, anthropology and political science — to present their research to other graduate students.
In addition to the interdisciplinary undergraduate concentration in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the center also offers programs and various opportunities for undergraduates. As director, Snyder said he is going to start initiatives on social entrepreneurship and climate change as they relate to Latin America.
Snyder said he thinks undergraduates will find the field of social entrepreneurship interesting, and he is planning to have a workshop on the subject during this academic year.
As part of the climate change initiative, there will be a conference Apr. 8 with experts on climate change from Latin America and Washington, D.C. invited to attend, Snyder said.
In addition, a small group of undergraduates — sponsored by CLACS, the Watson Institute for International Studies and the Center for Environmental Studies — will have the opportunity to travel to Cancun in December for a global climate change summit. A report of their findings and experiences at the summit will then be a point of discussion at the climate change conference at Brown.
Snyder said he also plans to continue an initiative started by Gutmann on violence in Latin America.
People from Latin America, India, South Africa and other countries have been invited to attend an April conference on the subject. Snyder said that scholars from Latin American cities will be paired with scholars from other cities in the global south, adding that such "cross-regional dialogue" doesn't happen often.
"The best way to address theoretical questions in the social sciences is to have people grounded in context," Snyder said.
"There are very exciting pedagogical and intellectual agendas that come out of Latin America," Snyder said. Latin American studies remain an important field of research, he said, since the "share of the U.S. population that's Latino is growing."
