LACS welcomes new director, Victoria Langland
Victoria Langland, associate professor of history and Romance languages and literatures, has accepted the role of director of the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, effective July 1, 2017.
Professor Langland specializes in twentieth-century Latin American history, especially the Southern Cone, and writes about dictatorships, gender, the uses of memory, student and other social movements, and, more generally, the intersections of culture and power. She is the author of Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the Making and Remembering of 1968 in Military Brazil (Duke University Press, 2013) and the co-editor of Monumentos, Memoriales y Marcas Territoriales (Siglo XXI, 2003). She is also co-editing an updated version of The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics (under contract, Duke University Press). Before coming to the University of Michigan, she was on the faculty at the University of California, Davis and at Lafayette College.
A message from our new director:
I wanted to offer a quick note to say that I’m delighted to be stepping into the role of director of the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (LACS) and Brazil Initiative (BI) this summer and look forward to working with all of you. The ongoing LACS team of Bebete Martins (Brazil Initiative program manager), Alana Rodriguez (LACS program specialist), and Howard Tsai (Indigenous languages program coordinator) has been wonderfully supportive as we have been making this transition, as has outgoing Director Alex Stern. I’m deeply grateful to her for the leadership and dedication she has shown at LACS and the BI over the last three years, as she has expanded our ties with institutions and programs in Latin America, helped organize several major conferences and symposia, all while continuing to ensure that LACS offered a wide variety of programming, courses, research opportunities, and areas of community engagement. We all wish her the best as she becomes chair of the Department of American Culture.
We’ve already got some exciting programs underway for the Fall of 2017 and will send formal announcements of those soon. But we’re also always eager to hear from you about events you’d like to see take place, or events you’re planning for which you’d like LACS support, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
All best,
Tori Langland
History, Portuguese & LACS
langland@umich.edu