Faculty Research

2011-2012 Faculty Research Cluster Awards

Felicidades to John Hoopes, Department of Global Indigenous Nations & Anthropology and Glen Adams & Ludwin E. Molina, Psychology for their winning Faculty Research Cluster proposals! Please read below a short abstract of the research cluster proposals:.

A Proposal for the Creation of "Multiethnic Interaction in the Pan-Caribbean: An Interdisciplinary Latin Americanist Research Cluster"
John Hoopes, Robert C. Schwaller, and Peter Herlihy

We would like to create a research cluster that focuses on multiethnic interaction in pre-Hispanic as well as historic times in the pan-Caribbean area. This area is conceived of as a hypothetical model nicknamed the “American Mediterranean”—a geographic context for a complex network of interaction that linked communities within an area that stretched from the northern Yucatan and Belize in the northwest and included the Antilles, Venezuela, northern Colombia, the southern Central American isthmus (Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras). The purpose of the research cluster will be to promote research within this paradigm, a unit of analysis for research on indigenous peoples in pre-Hispanic, Colonial, Republican, Modern, and contemporary contexts.

The research cluster will combine the efforts of faculty and graduate students to produce publishable research and seek external funding to strengthen the existing emphasis on indigenous cultures of Central America at the University of Kansas (KU). The activities will include planning symposia inviting colleagues from other institutions, promoting research on relevant research on collections in the Archaeological Research Center, the Spencer Library, and other KU facilities. The cluster will also work toward the development of new and existing courses.

Constructions of Identity: Implications for Immigration and Social Justice Policy
Ludwin E. Molina and Glenn Adams

The proposed Latin American Research Cluster will facilitate a one-day meeting of researchers from Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) and various departments across KU. The meeting will lay the foundation for a research cluster around the topic of constructions of identity—national, ethnic, regional, indigenous—and the implications of these identity constructions for issues related to (im)migration and social justice. The research cluster will build on the core expertise of researchers across humanities and social science units with the strong potential to extend to researchers in natural sciences and the Schools of Business, Education, Law, Medicine, Public Health, and Social Welfare.

Peter Herlihy, Acting Director of the The Center of Latin American Studies and Anita Herzfeld, Professor and Undergraduate Director for LAS traveled to San José, Costa Rica, October 27th-31st to organize a UCR-KU conference on "Space" focusing on Central America, and its geographic, environmental, symbolic, political and social dimensions.  The conference is tentatively scheduled for Spring Break in March 2011.  Herzfeld, a recognized authority on the Limonese Creole language, of Costa Rica's eastern coast, gave an invited presentation in a Colloquy.  Herlihy was invited by the faculty and students of the School of Geography to present on his research on Neo-Liberal land reform and the end of social property in Mexico. 

Herlihy and Herzfeld discovered a great willingness to collaborate on more specific scholarly activities within the context of the historic UCR-KU exchange that was recently described in the book by long standing distinguished scholars, Historian Charles L. Stansifer and Anthropologist, María Eugenia Bozzoli V.   The book titled, The University of Kansas and The University of Costa Rica: An Extraordinary Relationship. San Jose, Editorial UCR, 2010, was published this year.

The Center of Latin American Studies also sent 20 graduate students to Latin America this summer through Tinker and FLAS scholarships and supported research by affiliate faculty throughout the region.

Three faculty research centers in Central and South America were established and are maintained by KU faculty. The Center nurtured an affiliation between KU and the University of San Marcos (Peru) through a US Dept. of State Fulbright Exchange Grant 2003-2006. This exchange generated rewarding scholarly opportunities for more than 40 faculty members involved, including conferences in both locations and visits by both chancellors.

The resources KU and CLAS devote to hosting students and faculty from our affiliated Latin American institutions and sending faculty and students for extended stays there, organizing K-12 teacher training programs (in Kansas and in-country), and the events CLAS builds around these activities bring peers into direct, focused contact with one another. Especially among students, these cultural and intellectual exchanges can jump-start interest in Latin America.