Latin American And Latino Studies Earns Departmental Status At UCSC

SANTA CRUZ, CA–The newest department to be established at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the Latin American and Latino Studies Department (LALS). The move reflects institutional consolidation and creates opportunities for growth, said LALS Department Chair Jonathan Fox.

"This decision builds on our university’s tradition of pioneering innnovative interdisciplinary fields," he said. "Both the administration and the Academic Senate have recognized that our intellectual project merits becoming a permanent part of the UCSC landscape."

The program began as Latin American studies in the 1970s and was renamed in 1994 to reflect the importance of building intellectual bridges with the study of Chicano and Latino populations within the United States. The new name coincided with a reorganization designed to bolster the study of cross-border issues. The department is by far the largest and most established program in the U.S. that bridges the fields of Latin American and Latino studies, said Fox.

The broader focus allows students to address contemporary issues such as globalization, transnationalization, and the ways in which groups reproduce their regional culture in binational settings. The innovative approach has attracted broad interest from other universities.

With increased migration from Latin America and the growth of the Latino population in the United States, there is greater need for classes that theorize the experience of Latinos, said Professor Patricia Zavella, whose appointment is moving from Community Studies to LALS. But there is also a need to examine "what is pushing people to migrate and who stays behind," said Zavella, director of the UCSC Chicano/Latino Research Center, which was established in 1992 and which helped launch the department’s focus. "It’s a complicated but useful approach," she noted.

The ascension from program to departmental status was approved February 12 by Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor John Simpson.