Faculty Working Groups

Through sponsorship of working groups, CLACS is proud to contribute to the expansion of the dialogue between the faculty and the students beyond the classroom. The working groups foster interdisciplinary exchange, involving collaborations across departments at NYU as well as other academic institutions. Many of the working groups are co-sponsored and coordinated by faculty at NYU and Columbia University. These groups host research symposia and public events with noted scholars in the field and also provide a space where graduate students are encouraged to present their work-in-progress and receive constructive feedback from experts in their fields of interest. 

Current Working Groups

New York City Workshop in Latin American History (NYCLAHW)
NYCLAHW was founded in 1999 by faculty at SUNY Stony Brook Columbia and NYU, but has since expanded to include faculty throughout the metropolitan area. Today, it is a joint project of the graduate programs in Latin American History at Columbia, CUNY, NYU and SUNY Stony Brook.

The meetings take place the last Friday of the month at NYU from 11am to 1pm, followed by lunch. To join the email list or receive copy of the papers, please contact Julia del Palacio.

For information on past and upcoming events, please see the event calendar.

Working Group on Latin American Migration
The working group focuses on contemporary Latin American migrations and the ways in which they are transforming societies. Drawing on the research strengths of new and existing Latin Americanist faculty and graduate students, the working group explores the economic, social and educational implications of local, regional and international Latin American migration trends, with particular emphasis on U.S.-bound Latin American migration.

The topics investigated include the role of remittances, hometown associations and savings in promoting economic well-being as well as dependence in migrant-sending communities; role of migration in family disruption and well-being, as well as implications of family separation for migrants and their family members; impact of migration on gender relations and ethnic identity; educational consequences of Latino immigration, including the high proportion of youth abandoning their schooling in their communities of origin. Other issues discussed are inter-generational progress, border dynamics and migration policies.

Working group invites guest speakers with expertise on a selected topic relating to Latin American migration.

For more information about the group or to join the listserv, please email Carmina Makar.

For information on past and upcoming events, please see the event calendar.

The Atlantic World Workshop
Atlantic history is a growing field that encompasses research on trends spanning Africa, the Americas, and Europe; comparative analysis of Atlantic historical processes; and histories of any of the subregions of the Atlantic world. The Atlantic World Workshop at NYU, established in 1997, is a forum for the exchange of ideas among scholars of the humanities and social sciences with interests in the history of the Atlantic world.

The workshop sponsors regular sessions during the academic year to discuss works in progress by both junior and senior researchers. Workshop participants have addressed such themes as Atlantic diasporas, slavery, cross-regional political and religious movements, literature and language, gender, and Atlantic trade, with an emphasis on the period between 1500 and 1900.  

Papers are circulated in advance, and all sessions are open to both members of the Atlantic world history program of the NYU History Department and the wider scholarly community.

To learn more, please visit the workshop homepage. To receive a copy of the papers, please contact Aaron Slater.

For information on past and upcoming events, please see the event calendar.

The New York Carribbean Studies Working Group
The New York Caribbean Studies Working Group began to meet in the spring of 2008, recognizing the need for an interdisciplinary forum that would address the diversity of scholarship about the region and at the same time provide a space for students and scholars of the Caribbean to participate in joint discussions about their projects. At the heart of the working group is the concept that there are intersecting conversations and debates that recur throughout the larger Caribbean and that they can rarely be understood in terms of a single linguistic tradition, a single national discourse, or a single scholarly discipline.  

One of the goals of the group is thus to chart the intellectual traditions of Caribbean Studies as they criss-cross the disciplines, from Social Sciences to creative arts and cultural scholarship. In geographical terms, addressing the intersections requires the inclusion of the Central American and Mexican Caribbean coast, the Caribbean areas of Venezuela and Colombia, as well as northern Brazil in the purview of the working group. Finally, the interface between a more traditionally conceived Caribbean Studies and adjacent projects such as Atlantic Studies, pan-Africanism, Latino Studies and various diaspora studies is of great interests to the group’s work and discussion.
For more information about the group, please contact Ana Dopico  or Sybille Fischer.

For more information on past and upcoming events, please see the event calendar.

Past Working Groups

Latin American Critiques of Modernity and Post-Colonial Debates Seminar Series
The goal of the seminar series is to explore the Ibero-Atlantic experience since the encounter between Spain and the Americas in the sixteenth century as an alternative form of modernity, one within which specific imaginaries, forms of knowledge, subject formations, or relatively unprecedented social constellations came into being with incalculable consequences that are still with us nowadays. The seminar will contribute to disseminating and enlarging Latin American postolonial debates on and critiques of modernity by facilitating a dialogue between Latin American and Spanish scholars (based in Latin America or Spain) and Latin-Americanists and Iberianists based in North America.

For more information on past seminar events, please see the event calendar.

Working Group on Perspectives of Urban Brazil
An interdisciplinary approach to the issues of urban development, public space and community building as seen through the lens of the Brazilian experience. The working group invites scholars from various universities for public presentations.

For more information on past events, please see the event calendar.

Working Group on Sociology
Although much is known about poverty and inequality trends in Mexico, much less is known about socioeconomic mobility, which we understand to be the association between parent’s resources and variety of adult children’s outcomes, including educational attainment, occupational status, earning and wealth. Four panels will present current research on the topic, addressing recent trends and looking at influences of education and migration on mobility. For detailed description of the conference, please see the event calendar.