Specialization Coordinators: Ariadna Tenorio López and Luis Felipe Gómez Lomelí
The specialization in Culture, Theory, and Society (CTS) gives graduate students interested in cultural studies the opportunity to examine the underlying though and social dynamics expressed in Latin American and Latinx material and immaterial cultural products, such as books, rites, food, games, clothing, videos, archives, toys, medicines or legends. Understanding that anything can be analyzed as a cultural product and/or as a social construction, the specialization encourages students to draw on the knowledge and methodologies from all necessary disciplines—from the natural and social sciences to the humanities—to define their objects and/or subjects of study and to build their respective theoretical approaches.
- View recent courses relevant for Culture, Theory, and Society
- View faculty & staff engaged with Culture, Theory, and Society
PURPOSE OF LAS SPECIALIZATION RESEARCH AND LEARNING COMMUNITIES
- To help students and advisors to navigate the vast and constantly shifting curricular landscape supporting Latin American Studies at UF.
- To foster connection and collaboration around shared interests among current and prospective UF faculty, students, and partners.
Recent Courses Relevant for Culture, Theory and Society specialization
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION
- AEC 4500: Program Development and Evaluation in Extension (When focused in Latin America)
ANTHROPOLOGY
- ANG6930: Research for Archaeological Data Analysis and Visualization
- ANG6930 Geoarcheology
- ANG6930 Applying GIS in archaeological research
- ANG 6930 Historicities
- ANG6427 The Social Lives of Things
- LAS 6938 Ethnographic Image
- ANG 6930 War & Forgetting (in the Americas)
ARCHITECTURE
- ARC 6228 Film and Architecture
- LAA 6342 Landscape Architecture Criticism
- LAA 6713 Cultural Landscapes
ART AND ART HISTORY
- ARH 5667 Colonial Andean Art
- ARH 5877 Gender, Representation, and the Visual Arts: 1600-1900
- ARH 6666 Colonial Latin American Art Seminar
- ARH 6797 Museum Education
CENTER FOR GENDER, SEXUALITIES, AND WOMEN'S STUDIES RESEARCH
WST 6935: Special Topics in Women’s Studies
CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
- LAS 6938 Afrofuturism & Black Joy across Afro Latin America
- LAS 6938 Environmental Catastrophes, Tipping Points, and Challenges
- LAS 6938 Gender and Biodiversity Conservation
- LAS 6938 Gender and Political Conflict in Latin America
- LAS 6938 Indigenismo and Inter-ethnic Alliances in Latin America
- LAS 6938 Music & Brazilian Identity
- LAS 6938 Nature and Culture in Latin America
- LAS 6938 Politics of Knowledge in Latin America
- LAS 6938 Latin American Thought
- LAS 6938 Populisms
- LAS 6938 Power and Environment
- LAS 6938 Coffee Culture
- LAS 6938 Affective Archives
- LAS 6938 Creative Narratives
- LAS 6938 Relational Racializations of Race
- LAS 6938 Social Movements and Gender
- LAS 6938 Reproduction and Reproductive Justice in the Americas
- LAS 6938 Visual Ethnographic Storytelling
ECONOMICS
- ECO 7707 International Economic Relations
FOREST RESOURCES AND CONSERVATION
- FNR 6061 Conflict and Collaboration in Natural Resources
- FNR 6668 Natural Resources in a Changing Climate
- FOR 5157 Ecosystem Restoration Principles and Practice
HISTORY
- LAH 5438 Modern Mexico
- LAH 5476 Caribbean History to 1800: Slavery, Colonization, and International Conflict
- LAH 5934 Topics in Latin American History
LAW
- LAW 6936 Latin@s and the Law Seminar
POLITICAL SCIENCE
- CPO 6307 Latin American Politics I
- CPO 6728 Ethnicity and Nationalism
- CPO 6732 Democratization and Regime Transition
- CPO 6736 Post-Communist politics
- POT 6505 Politics and Theory
- POT 6067 Contemporary Political Theory
FREQUENCY OF COURSE OFFERINGS
Some courses contributing to specializations are offered every semester, others once every few years. The list of courses provided here is not intended to guarantee any curricular offerings, but rather to open horizons to topics that have been and may be offered in widely varied programs around UF.
ADDITIONAL COURSES
Each specialization offers students the opportunity to craft personalized programs of study and to add their own contributions. Students may identify additional courses relevant for a specialization, including new and one-time offerings, and may seek approval from the Specialization Coordinator to count such courses toward specialization credits.
FACULTY & STAFF ENGAGED WITH CULTURE, THEORY, AND SOCIETY
Culture, Theory, and Society LAS Core Faculty:
CARLOS DE LA TORRE
- Research Interest: Populisms | Racism and citizenship
- Geographic Expertise: Andean area: Ecuador
REBECCA HANSON
- Research Interest: Crime and citizen security | Political sociology | Urban sociology | Gender
- Geographic Expertise: Venezuela and Colombia
CLATE KORSANT
- Research Interest: Environmental and cultural anthropology | Visual anthropology | Documentary film and photography | Political ecology |Eco-pedagogy
- Geographic Expertise: Central America, Costa Rica
CARMEN MARTÍNEZ NOVO
- Research Interest: Race and ethnicity | Political anthropology | Indigenous politics and rights | Politics and aesthetics of memory
- Geographic Expertise: Ecuador, Andes, Amazon, Mexico, Spain
SUSAN PAULSON
- Research Interest: Political ecology | gender/class/race/ethnicity | research methodologies | sustainability science | degrowth
- Geographic Expertise: Andes, Brazil, Comparative Latin America
RAFAEL RAMÍREZ SOLÓRZANO
- Research Interest: Latinx Social Movements with focus on Gender and Sexuality | Racial/Latinx Geographies |Women of Color Feminism | Queer of Color Critique | Latina/o/x Political Theory | Relational Racialization | Qualitative and Archival Research Methods
- Geographic Expertise: United States, Mexico, Central America
JOHN RICHARD STEPP
- Research Interest: Ecological anthropology | ethnobotany | medical anthropology | visual anthropology
- Geographic Expertise: Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Ecuador, Peru, Caribbean
CARLOS SUÁREZ CARRASQUILLO
- Research Interest: Urban Politics | Public Policy | Puerto Rican Politics | Caribbean Politics
- Geographic Expertise: Caribbean, Puerto Rico.
WELSON TREMURA
- Research Interest: Ethnomusicology | Brazilian jazz | classical and vocal music
- Geographic Expertise: Latin America, Brazil
CATHERINE TUCKER
- Research Interest: Environmental governance | community-based conservation | institutional analysis | climate change adaptation | belief systems | sustainability
- Geographic Expertise: Central America, Mexico, and Peru
ROBERT WALKER
- Research Interest: GeoSpatial Analysis & Techniques | Global Environmental and Social Change
- Geographic Expertise: Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador
MEG WEEKS
- Research Interest: Twentieth-century Latin American history | social movements, gender and sexuality | domestic labor, sex work | the politics of reproduction and reproductive rights | second and third-wave feminisms
- Geographic Expertise: Brazil
Culture, Theory, and Society LAS Affiliates:
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION
- Research Interest: Behavior change | Cultural competency | Community development
- Geographic Expertise: Central America, South America and Cuba
ANTHROPOLOGY
- Research Interest: Native American languages
- Geographic Expertise: Mexico, Mesoamerica
- Research Interest: Archaeology | Geoarchaeology
- Geographic Expertise: Central Andes
- Research Interest: Archaeology | Ethnohistory | Iconography
- Geographic Expertise: Mesoamerica
- Research Interest: Violence, rights and political community
- Geographic Expertise: Peru
ARCHITECTURE
- Research Interest: Urban planning
- Geographic Expertise: South America
- Research Interest: Human-centric AI in architectural practice
- Geographic Expertise: Worldwide
ART AND ART HISTORY
- Research Interest: Inclusive Praxis in Cultural Heritage Spaces, Cultural Heritage Informatics, 21st Century praxis in GLAMr (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, repositories), Critical Heritage Studies, Cross-Pollination/Convergence Issues in Libraries, Archives, Museums, Greenspaces, Muse Tech + Muse Social, Liberatory Praxis and Black Radical Traditions in Museums/Cultural Heritage
- Research Interest: Art and memory | Pedagogy in arts education | Medicine and arts integration | Indigenous identities | Learning environments in the arts | Art cultures | Arts-based research
- Geographic Expertise: Guatemala, General
- Research Interest: Design | Design thinking | Participatory design | Development | Intercultural communications
- Geographic Expertise: Mexico, General
CENTER FOR GENDER, SEXUALITIES, AND WOMEN'S STUDIES RESEARCH
- Research Interest: Latinx Gender, Sexualities, Embodiment, Visual Art, Performance, Cultural Production, and Critical Girlhood/Youth Studies | Black/Latinx/Afro-Latinx ethno-racial formation and relations in the U.S.
- Geographic Expertise: U.S./Miami, Florida
ECONOMICS
- Research Interest: Social interactions | Education | Development economics | Program evaluation
- Geographic Expertise: Mexico
FOREST RESOURCES AND CONSERVATION
- Research Interest: Human dimensions of natural resources | Invasive species management | Forest management | Environmental conservation
- Geographic Expertise: General
HISTORY
- Research Interest: Social movements | Student movements | Oral history | Memory | Disability history
- Geographic Expertise: Central America, Mexico
LAW
- Research Interest: Comparative law | Critical race theory | LatCrit theory
- Geographic Expertise: Puerto Rico, Latino Studies
LITERATURE
- Research Interest: Brazilian Science Fiction and Fantasy | Latin American Science Fiction | Brazilian Detective and Crime Fiction | Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Brazilian Narrative | Brazilian Cinema | Brazilian Culture
- Geographic Expertise: Brazil. Latin America
- Research Interest: Languages, Literatures, and Cultures/Haitian Creole and Haitian Francophone Studies | Sociolinguistics | Language Documentation | Language Contact, Language Policy and Planning | Linguistics in Literacy and Lexicography
- Geographic Expertise: Haiti. Francophone Latin America
- Research Interest: Latina/o and Chicano/a Studies | Afro-Latino/a Studies | Intellectual History of the Americas | Feminist, Queer Theory and Cultural Studies | Feminist Theory | Popular Culture | Visual Culture
- Geographic Expertise: United States. Latin America
- Research Interest: Mexican Studies | Latin American Literature and Film | 20th- and 21st- Century Critical Approaches within Interdisciplinary Humanities
- Geographic Expertise: Mexico. Latin America
- Research Interest: Caribbean and Postcolonial Studies | Pedagogy |Digital Humanities
- Geographic Expertise: Caribbean.
- Research Interest: 19th Century and early 20th Century Latin American literature and culture | Spanish-American film studies | Psychoanalysis | Literary and critical theory
- Geographic Expertise: Argentina, United States, Latin America
POLITICAL SCIENCE
- Research Interest: Popular politics and citizen empowerment | Development of democracy
- Geographic Expertise: Central America, Argentina
- Research Interest: Gender and politics in Latin America | Violence against women in politics | Access to justice
- Geographic Expertise: Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Chile