Latin American and Global Studies: Desencuentros y Diálogos

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Global Studies is on the rise in universities throughout the US, and in institutional terms, at least in the US, Latin America (and other) area studies programs are in retreat. Whatever advantages that might come with the fresh “global” lens, one obvious danger is the reintroduction of hegemon-centric epistemologies, which Latin American studies has been consistently critiquing and gradually displacing over the past three or four decades. The challenge that follows is to continue opening space for dialogue to better understand the “desencuentros” between these two interdisciplinary fields, to connect the best critical traditions of Latin American studies with its Global studies counterparts, and to probe possibilities for collaboration or even fusion, both conceptually and institutionally. How should this dialogue be conceived? What are its key axes and themes? What are its stakes? Who should be at the table for this conversation? This invited roundtable will address these and related questions. Latin America-based intellectuals must be central protagonists in this dialogue, given their key roles in the challenge to traditional approaches to Latin American studies, and distinctively positioned relationship to “the global.” The broader objective of this roundtable is to explore and highlight approaches to Global Studies that are both deeply informed by critical traditions of Latin American (and other) area studies, and that incorporate the best of the “global turn,” while remaining grounded in some version of what many, following Santos de Sosa, have called “epistemologies of the south.”

Sub Track

• Invited Sessions

Session Organizer

• Charles R Hale, University of California, Santa Barbara

Chair

• Paul E Amar, University of California Santa Barbara

Presenters

• Kathryn A Sikkink, Harvard University

• Adela E Pineda-Franco, Boston University

• Rudi J Colloredo-Mansfeld, University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill

• Rebecca Igreja, Universidad de Brasilia