Cristina Alcalde
Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies
Ph.D., Indiana University

Email: cristina.alcalde@uky.edu
Office: 212 Breckinridge Hall
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Cristina Alcalde is an anthropologist whose work focuses on gender, class, race, resistance, and domestic violence in Peru, and more recently also among Latinos in the U.S. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Indiana University. She has published in the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, Latin American Perspectives, and Ungendering Civilization: Reinterpreting the Archaeological Record (Pyburn, ed.). She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled, Gender Violence, Poverty, and Resistance in Women’s Lives in Peru, and on a co-edited volume on Peruvian academics’ visions of Peru from their vantage points in the U.S.

Rusty Barrett

Assistant Professor, Linguistics
Email: erbarrett@uky.edu
Office: 1367 Patterson Office Tower

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Rusty Barrett is a linguist specializing in sociolinguistics and indigenous languages of Latin America.  His research focuses on the K’ichean branch of Mayan languages spoken in highland Guatemala. He has published studies on the history and grammar of K’ichean languages and the ways in which the Maya cultural revitalization movement has influenced both language use and the grammatical structure of Mayan languages.  Dr. Barrett has also been involved in the development of teaching materials for K’iche’, the most widely-spoken language among the highland Maya. He has also published research on linguistic discrimination against Spanish-speaking immigrants from Latin America in the United States.

Horace Bartilow

Assosiate Professor, Political Science
Ph.D., State University of New York at Albany

Email: pascal@uky.edu
Office: 1645 Patterson Office Tower

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Horace A. Bartilow is a political scientist whose area of research is International Political-Economy. His current research concerns itself with the effect of U.S. counter-narcotic aid on human Rights violations in Latin America and how economic globalization and democratization affect state's ability to combat drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere.

Francie Chassen-Lopez
Department Chair, History

Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences
Ph.D., National Autonomous University of Mexico

Email: frclopz@uky.edu
Phone: 859-257-4344
Office: 1771 Patterson Office Tower
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Francie Chassen-López specializes in Latin American history with an emphasis on gender and ethnicity. She teaches History 563 Women in Latin America, History 562 Modern Mexico, History 638 Readings in Contemporary Latin American History and History 595 Race and Ethnicity in the Americas.  She received her Ph.D. from the National University of Mexico (1986) and taught in Mexican universities for ten years before returning to the U.S. Her book, The View from the South: from Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, Mexico 1867 – 1911 (Penn State University, 2004) won the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies’ Thomas McGann Prize for the Best Book published in 2004. Among her articles are: “Benito Juárez Maza of Oaxaca: Revolutionary Governor?” in Jurgen Burchenau and William Beezley, eds.  Revolutionary Governors of the Mexican Revolution (Rowman Littlefield, 2009), 19-42; “Distorting the Picture: Gender, Ethnicity, and Desire in a Mexican Telenovela (El Vuelo del Aguila)” Journal of Women’s History 20: 2 (2008): 106-29; “Patron of Progress: Juana Catarina Romero, Cacica of Tehuantepec” Hispanic American Historical Review 88:3 (2008): 393-426;  “¿Una derrota juarista?: Benito Juárez García vs. los Juchitecos” in Antonio Escobar Ohmstede, ed. Los pueblos indígenas en los tiempos de Juárez , (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, 2007), 37-68 y “El México de Juárez” in Carlos Sánchez Silva and Francisco José Ruiz Cervantes, eds. La formación política de Benito Juárez  (Oaxaca, Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, 2007), 25-57.

She is currently writing the biography of political boss, Juana Catarina Romero, in order to demonstrate how women participated in nation building in Mexico. She has recently embarked on a new research project that will study women, gender, and war in nineteenth century Mexico.

Susan Carvalho

Associate Provost for International Affairs
Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1989

Email: carvalho@uky.edu
Phone: 859 257-4067 x234

Office: 315 Bradley Hall

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Susan Carvalho's work in Latin American literature and culture began with a focus on the work of Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende.  Her current interest in spatial studies and the contributions of feminist geography to literary criticism led to her book on space and place in the work of contemporary women writers of Latin America.  Her current research focuses on the insights that masculinity studies lend to the reading of Latino/a fiction, including authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Oscar Hijuelos, and Roberto Fernández, among others.  Dr. Carvalho is the author of  Contemporary Spanish American Novels by Women: Mapping the Narrative (2007) and editor of Modernisms and Modernities: Studies in Honor of Donald L. Shaw (2006).

Scott Hutson
Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D., California-Berkely, 2004
Email: scotthutson@uky.edu
Office: 208 Lafferty Hall
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Scott Hutson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor. I came to archaeology from the broadly-based field of Latin American Studies. I am interested in a variety of topics related to human subjectivity. On the one hand, humans are subjects: active beings that have the agency to transform their position in society. On the other hand, humans cannot become acting subjects without being subjected to a messy and often unvoiced constellation of social norms, mannerisms, and expectations. These ideas may sound rather distant from archaeology. However, these differences are key to understanding the formation of diverse interest groups whose conflicting agendas form a premiere object of archaeological research: long term social change. Since I believe we can study difference by looking at daily practices in their spatial contexts, and since researchers have developed a battery of methods (paleoethnobotany, soil chemistry, use wear analysis, GIS, etc.) for recovering traces of practice and understanding space, archaeologists can get at subjectivity and social change in the past.

Email: ana.liberato@uky.edu
Phone: 859-257-6069
Office: 1573 Patterson Office Tower
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Sarah Lyon
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Emory 2005
Email: sarah.lyon@uky.edu
Office: 202 Lafferty Hall
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As an economic anthropologist, my research interests lie at the intersection of culture, agriculture, consumption and the global economy. I am particularly interested in exploring the opportunities and limitations that global markets and changing economic circumstances present to small farmers in the United States and Central America. I am currently beginning a new research project which focuses on the potential that agritourism holds for economic and community development in Kentucky. In the coming years, I plan to expand this research to encompass a multi-sited, comparative study of agritourism initiatives in diverse small farm communities located in Kentucky, Guatemala and Nicaragua. I am also continuing my ongoing research on the impact of sustainable coffee market participation on coffee producing communities.

Noemi Lugo
DMA, University of Colorado-Boulder, 1992
Email: nglugo00@uky.edu
Phone: 859-257-2865
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Noemí Lugo (DMA University of Colorado-Boulder). Music. Areas of Specialization: Vocal Music of Latin America. Former PLAS Director (2002-2004).

Tad Mutersbaugh
Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D., University of California-Berkley
Email: mutersba@uky.edu
Phone: 859-257-1316
Office: 1331 Patterson Office Tower
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Tad Mutersbaugh (PhD University of California-Berkeley). Associate Prof, Geography. Dr. Mutersbaugh’s teaching and research interests relate to ecologically sustainable and economically supportable rural development in Mexico. His current research is strongly field-based at sites in Oaxaca where he works with coffee farmers and their families, local political officials, cooperative officials, and others involved in the coffee production process locally and regionally. One of his central research questions relates to the manner in which rural families strategically restructure their spatiality of work within their villages in response to the demands of the international coffee economy -- particularly the requirements of fairtrade and organic production.

Email: erik.myrup@uky.edu
Phone: 859-257-3483
Office: 1735 Patterson Office Tower
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Chris Pool
Professor and Chair, Anthropology
Ph.D., Tulane University 1990
Email: capool0@email.uky.edu
Office: 203B Lafferty Hall
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Chris Pool (PhD., Tulane University). Anthropology. Areas of Specialization: Mesoamerican Archaeology, complex societies, political economy, cultural ecology, ceramic analysis. A native of Natchez, Mississippi, Associate Professor Christopher A. Pool has conducted archaeological fieldwork in southern Veracruz state, Mexico, since 1983, and he has directed NSF-sponsored research at the important Olmec and epi-Olmec site of Tres Zapotes, Veracruz since 1995. His research centers on preindustrial craft production and the role of political economy in the development of complex societies. His recent books include Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica (Cambridge), Classic Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz (Harvard and Dumbarton Oaks), Pottery Economics in Mesoamerica (Arizona), and Political Economy and Settlement Archaeology at Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, Mexico (UCLA). Former PLAS Director (2000-2002).

Sue Roberts
Professor and Chair, Geography
Ph.D., Syracuse
Email: sueroberts@uky.edu
Phone: 859-257-2399
Office: 1471 Patterson Office Tower
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Sue is an economic and political geographer. She is interested in global flows and networks and has done research on offshore financial centers in the Caribbean, transnational NGOs operating in Oaxaca, Mexico, and on other aspects of globalization.

Enrico Mario Santí
William T. Bryan Professor of Hispanic Studies
Ph.D., Yale
Email: esant2@uky.edu
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Enrico Mario Santí (Ph.D., Yale), William T. Bryan Professor of Hispanic Studies. Areas of specialization: 19th & 20th century Spanish American Literature, Modern Poetry, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies. Cuban and Caribbean Culture. Books: Pablo Neruda: The Poetics of Prophecy, Escritura y tradición, Pensar a José Martí, El acto de las palabras: Estudios y diálogos con Octavio Paz, Por una politeratura, Bienes del siglo, Ciphers of History. Editions of Neruda, Paz, Cabrera Infante, Ortiz. Interests: Post-colonial studies, gender theory, intellectual history, modern painting. Santí serves on editorial boards of a dozen scholarly journals, among them Hispanic Review, the flagship of the field, and on the Research Council of the Center for a Free Cuba, a Washington, D.C. think tank. In addition to a Guggenheim, Santí´s research has been supported over the years by fellowships from The Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society. For years he was one of the four rotating editors of the journal Cuban Studies .

Edward F. Stanton
Professor
Email: Stanton@uky.edu

Phone: 859-257-1565 (department)

Office: 1115 Patterson Office Tower
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Edward F.Stanton is interested in Latin American literature, history and culture, especially contemporary. 

Juana Suarez 
Assistant Professor of  Latin American Cinema and Visual Culture

Director of Latin American Studies Program

Acting Director of Hispanic Studies Undergraduate Program (2009-2010)
Email: juana.suarez@uky.edu  
Phone: 257-7102
Office: 1135 Patterson Office Tower

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Juana Suarez's current research focuses on Colombian cinema. It analyzes some sixty films through the lens of cultural studies: the interdisciplinary focus combines historical, anthropological, and sociological approaches with theories of film analysis and audience reception. The work analyzes the narrative function and mediating representations of power, race, gender, and social class in Colombian filmmaking, giving rise to a discussion of how cinema has constructed a discourse of identity and otherness that participates extensively in the formulation of a national imaginary.Other areas of research include violence, urban studies, testimonio and social activism in Latin America.

Haralambos Symeonidis
Ph.D., University of Münster, Germany, 1998
Assist. Prof. of Spanish Linguistics
Email: haralambos.symeonidis@uky.edu
Phone: 257-7094
Office: 1141 Patterson Office Tower

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Haralambos Symeonidis is a Romance Linguist specialized in Iberoromance Linguistics. He is interested in the contact between languages and the results of it. His main fields of my research are Jewish Spanish and Spanish, Portuguese and Guaraní in South America. Dr. Symeonidis has been studying extensively the language situation in the Guaranitic area. He is one of the directors of the Linguistic Atlas Project known as ALGR (Atlas Lingüístico Guaraní-Románico) whose objective is to provide answers to a series of linguistic questions concerning the Guaranitic area (Paraguay, Northeast Argentina, and parts of Brazil in the borders of Paraguay).

Areas of Speciality

• Language contact between Spanish and Amerindian Languages
• Bilingualism in Paraguay
• Linguistic policies/Language and Society in Latin America
• Romace Languages and Greek  

Email: clayton.thyne@uky.edu
Phone: 859-257-6958
Office: 1651 Patterson Office Tower
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Sophia Wallace

Email: sophia.wallace@uky.edu
Phone: 859-257-3136
Office: 1633 Patterson Office Tower
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Sophia earned her B.A. at the University of California, San Diego (2002), and her Ph.D. at Cornell University (2009). Her dissertation entitled "Beyond Roll Call Votes: Latino Representation in the 108^th -110^th Sessions of the U.S. House of Representatives" examines whether Latino constituents need Latino members of Congress to achieve the most representation. Currently she is working on several projects including work on Latino representation, English only legislation and transfers of campaign money between House members.

Areas of specialization

Racial and ethnic politics, legislative politics, U.S. Congress, Latino politics, and immigration politics.