Latin American and Latino Studies

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2007-2008 LALS Faculty

Silvia Marina Arrom
Professor of History and Jane's Professor of Latin American Studies. Ph.D., Stanford University. Her research interests are Latin American social history, modern Mexico, women and the family, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Her books include The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857; Riots in the Cities: Popular Politics and the Urban Poor in Latin America (with Servando Ortoll); and Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871. Her e-mail is Arrom@brandeis.edu.
Bio of Professor Arrom

Roxanne Davila
Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies and Latin American Literature. Ph.D., Yale University. Her dissertation is on literary representations of Mexico City between 1875-1950. Professor Davila's teaching interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century Latin American and Chicano literature and culture. Her research focuses on travel literature and archaeology in nineteenth-century Mexico and Central America, Pre-Columbian literature and cultures of Mexico and Central America, and the relationship between photography, painting, and literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century Latin American culture. Her e-mail is Davila@brandeis.edu.

Elizabeth Ferry
Assistant Professor of Anthropology. Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Not Ours Alone: Patrimony, Value and Collectivity in Contemporary Mexico (forthcoming). Her research interests focus on political economy in Latin America, the politics of value, and mining and mineral collecting. Her e-mail is Ferry@brandeis.edu.

Ricardo Godoy
Professor, Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Ph.D., Columbia University. His research interests include the effects of modernization on the peoples of the rainforests and the quality of life in Puerto Rico compared to the U.S. He is the author of Indians, Markets, and Rainforests: Theoretical, Comparative and Quantitative Explorations in the Neotropics and Mining and Agriculture in Highland Bolivia: Ecology, History, and Commerce Among the Jukumanis. His e-mail is Rgodoy@brandeis.edu.
Bio of Professor Godoy

Charles Golden
Assistant Professor of Anthropology. Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation is titled "Disentangling Culture Change from Chronology: The Early Classic/Later Classic Divide at Piedras Negras, Guatemala." His research interests include Maya archaeology and architecture. He has done field work in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. His e-mail is Cgolden@brandeis.edu.

Donald Hindley
Professor of Politics. Ph.D., Australian National University. His areas of interest are Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. His most recent publication is a translation (with Dian Fox) of The Physician of His Honour/El medico de su honra. His e-mail is Hindley@brandeis.edu.

James Mandrell
Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, Comparative Literature, Women's and Gender Studies, and Film Studies. Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University. His special interests are the picaresque, the historical novel, genre and gender, and literary theory. He is the author of Don Juan and the Point of Honor: Seduction, Patriarchal Society, and Literary Tradition. His e-mail is Mandrell@brandeis.edu.

Wellington Nyangoni
Professor of African and Afro-American Studies. Ph.D., Howard University. He specializes in comparative Third World politics. He is the author of Caribbean Economic Integration and the Search for Econonomic Viability and African and Caribbean States and Superpower Diplomacy. His e-mail is Nyangoni@brandeis.edu.

Marisol Negron
Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Latino Studies for 2006-08. Ph.D., Stanford University. Her dissertation is "Salsa as Commodity and Cultural Signifier: An Analysis of  Nuyorican Musical Form." Her research interests are migration and diaspora, popular culture and commodification, and Cuban-American, Dominican-American, Chicano, and Puerto Rican cultural production. Her e-mail is Mnegron@brandeis.edu

Ronnie Perelis
Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies. His dissertation is “Marrano Auto­­­­biography in its Transatlantic Context: A Lit­erary Analysis of Crypto-Jewish Writing on Exile, Exploration, and Spiritual Discovery.” His area of interest is Atlantic/Sephardic Studies. His e-mail is Ronito@brandeis.edu.

Angela Perez-Mejia
Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Women's and Gender Studies. Ph.D., State University of New York, Stony Brook. A native of Colombia, she specializes in travel writing, colonial Latin American literature, women's literature, and Latin American film. Her book La geografia de los tiempos dificiles: Escritura de viajes a Sur America 1780-1849 received honorable mention from the Casa de las Americas Prize Committee. It was translated as A Geography of Hard Times: Narratives about Travel to South America. Her current research focuses on buccaneers in the Caribbean during the seventeenth century. She is currently on leave in Bogata, Colombia. Her e-mail is Aperez@brandeis.edu.
Website for Professor Perez-Mejia

Lucia Reyes de Deu
Lecturer in Hispanic Studies. She is the recipient of a Tinker Field Research Grant and an Excellence in Teaching Award from SUNY, Stony Brook. Her research interests are sociological approaches to Latin American culture and literatures, cultural studies, and Andean culture and literatures. Her e-mail is Lreyes@brandeis.edu.

Fernando Rosenberg
Associate Professor of Latin American Literature. Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Avant-Garde and Geopolitics in Latin America and is a member of the editorial board of Hispanic Poetry Review. His areas of interest are 19th- and 20th-century poetry, narrative, and critical theory. His e-mail is Ferosen@brandeis.edu.

Laurence Simon
Associate Dean, Academic Planning; Professor and Director, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Ph.D., Clark University. He led Oxfam America's work in Central America and the Caribbean and its policy analysis worldwide. He is the author of El Salvador Land Reform, 1980-1981 (with James Stephens). Professor Simon has done field work in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica, among other countries. His e-mail is Simon@brandeis.edu.
Bio of Professor Simon

Faith Smith
Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies and English and American Literature. Ph.D., Duke University. A native of Jamaica, her research interests are gender, nationalism, and culture in the Caribbean. She is the author of Creole Recitations: John Jacob Thomas and Colonial Formation in the Late Nineteenth-Century Caribbean. Her current projects are an edited collection of essays on sexuality in the Caribbean and a manuscript on late nineteenth-century modernity in the Caribbean. Her e-mail is fsmith@brandeis.edu.

Ibrahim Sundiata
Professor of African and Afro-American Studies and Samuel and Augusta Spector Professor of History. Ph.D., Northwestern University. His research intests are slavery throughout the world and race relations in the United States and Latin America. He has published on race relations in Brazil, Cuba and Puerto Rico, has conducted fieldwork in Brazil, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Sundiata is the author of four books. His e-mail is Sundiata@brandeis.edu.

Eva Thorne
Meyer and Walter Jaffe Assistant Professor of Politics. Ph.D., M.I.T. Her research interests are race and ethnicity, rural politics, social movements, democratization, and labor politics, with a focus on multilateral development banks, indigenous and Afro-Latin land rights, economic policymaking in developing countries, and democratization and social movements in Latin America. Her dissertation on the "Politics of Policy Compliance: The World Bank and the Social Dimensions of Development" includes a case study of Brazil's Polonoroeste project. Her e-mail is Ethorne@brandeis.edu.

Patricia Tovar
Assistant Professor of Economics and in the International Business School. Ph.D., University of Maryland. A native of Peru, her primary research interest is in international trade, with emphasis on political economy and trade policy. Other interests include behavioral economics, development and microeconomics. Her recent work and current research focus on the effects of loss aversion on trade policy and the choice of inefficient redistribution policies in international trade. Her e-mail is Tovar@brandeis.edu.

Javier Urcid
Associate Professor of Anthropology. Ph.D., Yale University. A native of Mexico, he has done field work throughout Mexico and Belize. He is the author of Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing and articles on the scribal traditions of southwestern Mexico. He is currently conducting an archeological project in the Gulf Lowlands of Southern Veracruz, Mexico on the region's political economy. He is a consultant to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. His e-mail is Urcid@brandeis.edu.