I am the Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (www.umass.edu/clacls) and Leonard J. Horwitz Professor of Latin American Politics and Studies. My fields of expertise include Latin American politics, with a focus on Brazil and the Southern Cone, feminisms and gender politics, social movements, civil society, non-governmental organizations, transnational activism, culture and politics, and race and ethnicity in the Americas.
Education: Ph.D., Yale University
Courses Taught: Government and Politics of Latin America; Collective Action and Political Change; Race and Gender Matters: Comparative and Global Perspectives
Current Projects: My current research centers on the articulation of race and anti-racist politics among feminist movements in Brazil and working with a team of Latin American feminist scholars on the "sidestreaming" of feminist discourses and practices into parallel social movements throughout the region. I co-coordinate an international research "Consortium on Social Movements and 21st Century Cultural and Political Transformations" involving eleven universities in Latin America, the US, and Europe. That collaborative project explores the two faces of social struggles evident in the Americas today: the proliferation of civic participation through the so-called "third sector" and governmental programs, on the one hand, and the increased visibility of less "civil-ized," more contentious collective action, on the other (see www.umass.edu/civsoc ). I also work with a faculty-graduate research group on "Afro-Latino Diasporas: Black Cultures and Racial Politics in the Americas," sponsored by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies and Afro-American Studies
