Americas

Studies of the Americas Initiative

Speaker at podium

Welcome to the Study of the Americas Initiative

Study Of The Americas Initiative

With a fully hemispherical focus, the Study of the Americas Initiative supports interdisciplinary research engaging in comparative analysis of culture, history, society, politics, music, art, media, language and literature of the Americas as it explores the interconnections between North, South, Central America and the Caribbean.

The Study of the Americas Initiative takes full advantage of our amazing strategic location in Florida, at the nexus of South, North, Central America and the Caribbean to bring different spaces of the western hemisphere into conversation by providing fora for scholars to come together and share knowledge.

Our Core Objectives

The Study of the Americas Initiative at Florida Atlantic University brings multiple disciplines within the humanities together to research and discuss the history, culture, society, politics, languages, literature, media, music, and arts of the western hemisphere in an effort to foster dialogue and promote understanding and appreciation of the multiple connections, influences and confluences of our common historical and geographical background. 

To accomplish these objectives, the Study of the Americas Initiative maintains the unique Marvin and Sybil Weiner Spirit of America Collection organizes lectures, symposia, workshops and other events that support our hemispheric, interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the study of the Americas. The initiative, in coordination with the academic programs in the FAU Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Collection Letters, awards a Fellowship.

We invite you to explore our website and find out more about our initiative and events. 

Dorothy F. Schmidt College Of Arts And Letters words on green graphic

Study of the Americas Initiative

Florida Atlantic University’s Study of the Americas Initiative foregrounds an interdisciplinary approach to research, discuss and engage the histories, cultures, societies, politics, languages, literatures, media, music, and arts of the western hemisphere. The nations of North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean share many cultural and historical interrelations that bind them through the legacies of colonialism, slavery, political movements and revolution. The Initiative promotes conversation on the intersections of spaces in the Americas by providing fora for discussion among scholars in all disciplines in the humanities.

Features of the Americas Initiative include:

  • FAU’s unique geographic, demographic and cultural relation to the Americas and Caribbean
  • Specialized resources for research including The Marvin and Sybil Weiner Spirit of America Collection which contains more than 13,000 publications and artifacts including rare works from the 16th century.
  • Substantial number of interdisciplinary faculty with extensive specializations on topics throughout the Americas
  • The College’s Ph.D. Program in Comparative Studies and the Caribbean and Latin American Studies Certificate especially encourage an extensive and interdisciplinary hemispherical focus.
  • A unique intellectual hub featuring lecture series from FAU and distinguished international scholars, an annual conference dedicated to Americas study, publication opportunities and affiliation with Americas-centered research centers around the globe.
  • The Americas Initiative aligns with FAU’s university-wide strategic plan platforms on Diversity, Community Engagement, Globalization, South Florida Culture and the Peace, Justice and Human Rights Initiative.
  • The Initiative showcases draws on FAU’s strengths as a minority serving institution where more than half the student population represent racial or ethnic difference and/or our robust international student body.
 
Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles, PhD.

Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles, PhD.

Dr. Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles is the Director of the Study of the Americas Initiative. She is also is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American studies in the Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature (LLCL). Her teaching and research interests include Caribbean literature, Brazilian literature, and Afro-Latin American Diaspora.

She is the author of Entre el bronce y el olvido: heroísmo y afrodescendencia en Colombia, Brasil y Cuba / Between Bronze and Oblivion: Heroism and Afro-descendants in Colombia, Brazil and Cuba (2023) published by Iberoamericana- Vervuert. She has published articles on Latin American poetry, narrative and theater in journals such as Latin American Research Review, Afro-Hispanic Review, and Latin American Theatre Review. Her article, “Heroísmo y conciencia racial en la poeta afrocubana Cristina Ayala,” was awarded the 2017 Ibero-American Prize for an Academic Article on the Nineteenth Century (LASA) as well as the Harold Eugene Davis Prize by the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies (MACLAS). Feministas Unidas awarded the Adela Zamudio Prize (2019) to her article “Activismo, literatura y cambio social en el Caribe hispano: aproximación en tres movimientos.” In 2022, her project “En nombre de la madre: el valor político del heroísmo en la narrativa de Maria Firmina dos Reis” was awarded the Marielle Franco Prize by the Gender and Feminist Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). For more information, please visit her website:  /artsandletters/about/directory/dornelles

New Faculty Introductions

We are proud to introduce our new faculty colleagues specializing in this cluster. They include:

Dr. Andrés Espinoza Agurto.

Dr. Agurto has been playing percussion since he was 8 years old. He studied Afro-Cuban percussion at the Escuela Nacional de Arte (ENA) in La Habana, Cuba, graduated summa cum laude from Berklee College of Music, receiving a BM in Jazz Composition, and holds an MA in Jazz studies and Ethnomusicology from the University of York (England). He received his Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Boston University in 2014. His upcoming book is titled Una Sola Casa: Salsa Consciente and the Poetics of the Meta-barrio, and analyzes the impact of Salsa music as a forging element of social and political identity within Latino and Latin American communities. He is also the composer, musical director, and percussionist of the Andres Espinoza World Jazz Ensemble, the Andres Espinoza Octet, and the Latin fusion sextet Los Songos Jalapeños.

Dr. Daniel Auguste, Sociology.

Dr. Auguste earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also served as an Associate Editor of Social Forces. Daniel earned a BA from Covenant College, with a major in Economics and a minor in Community Development. His research and teaching interests include inequality, stratification, economic and organizational sociology, and entrepreneurship. Daniel is currently working on several projects that investigate the importance of entrepreneurship for economic wellbeing among low and-moderate income households in the United States, the role of the state in shaping entrepreneurship development, and the link between religion and economic inequality.

Dr. Candace Cunningham, History.

Dr. Cunningham earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from USC where she won the Robert H. Wienefeld Essay Prize and was a Fellow in the Grace Jordan McFadden Professors Program. Her research focuses on the 20th century African American experience with a special emphasis on civil rights, education, gender, and the South. She has presented her research at numerous conferences, including the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the History of Education Society, and Southern Labor Studies. She is currently working on a manuscript about African American teachers who were in the long civil rights movement.

Dr. María Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature.

Dr. Dornelles earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Washington University in St Louis, MO. She also completed the graduate certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies in 2011. Her research interests include 19th Century Latin-American literature, Caribbean literature, Brazilian literature, Gender Studies, and Afro-Latin American Diaspora. Dr. Aguilar’s article, “Heroísmo y conciencia racial en la poeta afro-cubana Cristina Ayala,” was awarded the 2017 Ibero-American Prize for an Academic Article on the Nineteenth Century, and with the Harold Eugene Davis Prize awarded by the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies.. She is currently working on a book-length project entitled Herederos de la libertad: heroísmo y afrodescendencia en Colombia, Brasil y Cuba.

Dr. Regis Fox, Department of English.

Dr. Fox earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Riverside. Her primary research interests include Nineteenth-Century American Literatures, Feminist Theory, and African-American Literary and Cultural Studies. She has published in such journals as Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal and the Journal of American Studies, and in edited collections, including A Determined Life: The Elizabeth Keckley Reader. A McKnight Junior Faculty Fellow for the 2015-16 academic year, she released her first book, Resistance Reimagined: Black Women's Critical Thought as Survival (University Press of Florida) in December 2017.

Dr. Lindsay Harroff, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies.

Dr. Harroff comes from the University of Kansas as an Assistant Professor. Her research draws on perspectives from rhetorical studies, decolonial theory, and African studies to refigure matters of violence, identity, national community, justice, and democratic norms. Her dissertation, titled “Reimagining the National Community through Truth and Reconciliation: A Rhetorical Analysis of Truth Commissions in South Africa, Kenya, and the United States,” focuses on key concepts in the work of truth commissions—truth, reconciliation, and justice—to examine how they contribute to national unity.

Dr. Gonzalo Aguiar Malosetti, Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature Department.

He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American literature (Spanish and Portuguese) from Washington University in St Louis, MO. He studies Latin American intellectual history, literature, cinema, and the atre. His book La modernidad refractada: pensamiento, creación y resistencia en la historia intelectual de Argentina, Brasil y Uruguay (1900-1935) was published in 2019 by Editorial Cuarto Propio (Santiago de Chile). The book shows how Latin American intellectuals reclaimed contested spaces in the struggle for political and cultural power. Dr. Aguiar Malosetti’s current research project has been selected to participate in the 2020 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar titled “The Making of Modern Brazil.”

Dr. Marquese McFerguson, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies.

Dr. McFerguson comes to FAU from the University of South Florida as an Assistant Professor with an emphasis in Intercultural Communication. His research, teaching, and service focuses on how individuals in society communicate, perform and (re)imagine identity across the diverse number of cultural intersections including race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Furthermore, his creative-intellectual research about representation and media-created scripts is guided by feminist, aesthetic, and narrative sensibilities and situated within the interdisciplinary fields of Media Studies, Hip Hop Studies, and Performance Studies.

Dr. Stephanie M. Ortiz, Sociology.

Dr. Ortiz joins us as an Assistant Professor from Texas A&M University where she received her Ph.D. in Sociology. Her research examines how racism and sexism are reproduced and contested in the everyday context. This fall, she will be teaching Sociological Perspectives and Race & Ethnic Relations.

Dr. Jermaine Scott, Department of History.

Dr. Scott received his Ph.D. in African American Studies from Northwestern University, and a BA in History from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. His research interests include 20th century African American history, the cultural politics of sport, black politics, African Diaspora history, and postcolonial theory. He is working on a manuscript, tentatively titled “Black Teamwork: Soccer and Black Politics in the African Diaspora, 1950-2008," that interrogates the ways black athletes transformed football (soccer) into a site for black politics and solidarity during the second half of the twentieth century.

Dr. Eyal Weinberg, History.

Dr. Weinberg received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin where his dissertation was recognized with Honorable Mention for Best Dissertation in the Humanities by the Latin American Studies Association's Brazil Section. Weinberg’s research examines histories of medicine, health, political violence, and human rights in Cold War Latin America, with a focus on Brazil. His current book project explores the contested realms of professional medicine, bioethics, and political repression in military and post-authoritarian Brazil. Weinberg’s teaching explores the intersections of medicine and human rights in Latin America, as well as histories of the Cold War, torture, and transitional justice in the Southern Cone and the Global South.

Affiliated Faculty

Anthropology

English

History

Languages, Linguistics & Comparative Literature

Music

Philosophy

Political Science

School of Communication & Multimedia Studies

Sociology

Theatre and Dance

Visual Arts & Art History

Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies

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Marvin & Sybil Weiner

The Marvin and Sybil Weiner Spirit of America Collection

The Marvin & Sybil Weiner Spirit of America Collection at Florida Atlantic University offers a wide variety of primary source materials suitable for research in the disciplines of history, political science, philosophy, pre-law and linguistics. With more than 13,000 items, the collection consists of printed and manuscript materials dating from the fifteenth century to the modern era. 

Materials include rare books, pamphlets, historical newspapers and journals, broadsides and cartoons, and documents.This collection consists of over xxx publications of British pamphlets published throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The pamphlets in this collection are mostly concerned with politics, legislation, religion, and revolution within Great Britain and the American colonies. View the collection.

*FAU Library Special Collections are available for supervised use in the Special Collections reading room during regular hours or by appointment. Users are required to complete a registration form and to comply with regulations governing use. Research assistance may be available but please email or phone first to set up an appointment.

Photocopies or electronic copies of material in the collections may be provided within copyright limits but may not be ready immediately. In addition, selected materials are digitized and available electronically through the Digital Library. 

*(Information from S.E. Wimberly Library's webpage)

Get in Touch!

For more information about the Study of the Americas Initiative and our events, please contact us.

americas@fau.edu
Study of the Americas, FAU
777 Glades Road
Boca Raton, FL 33431

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

The College of Arts & Letters offers degree programs and certificates in the performing arts, fine arts, languages and social sciences.