Samantha Greenspun completed her PhD in December 2019. Her research focused on the impacts of taxation and social spending on gender inequality across six countries in Latin America. During her time at the Stone Center, Samantha led service-learning and experiential courses including “Introduction to Latin American Studies I and II” and “Model OAS”. She received the William J. Griffith Award for Outstanding Teaching Assistant in Latin American Studies and the Tulane 34 Award. Samantha was invited to deliver a presentation for Ignite Tulane in its inaugural year to celebrate successful methods utilized to foster engaged students in the classroom. She mentored a number of Tulane students including supporting student athletes and serving as an advisor to an undergraduate’s Center for Public Service project. In her doctoral research, she supported the launch and development of Tulane’s Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Institute, where she served as the Institute’s Associate Director. After completing field research on social programs in Mexico, Samantha received her MA from the Stone Center in 2011, while also earning a Certificate in Global Health from the School of Public Health. She also holds a BA from Gettysburg College.

Jessica Glass earned her PhD in Latin American Studies. Her dissertation is titled, Where the Asfalto Ends: Commodification, Social Exclusion, and Covid-10 in Rio de Janerio's Favelas.

My research explores how performance becomes a staging ground to construct a sense of group cohesion across cultures, distances, and geographic imaginaries. While my earlier scholarly research focused on the New Orleans’ Latin American community as a point of departure, my current scholarly research embarks on an exploration of issues of belonging, identity, and intercultural performance in the context of global exchanges in the field of higher education as well as in Brazilian peripheral communities.

My first book, Post-Katrina Brazucas: Brazilians in New Orleans (UNO Press: 2012), cut across disciplinary methodologies by using the lenses of literary and cultural studies, performance, dance, and ethnography to approach my research subject of migration. I engaged with contemporary cultural theory related to the construction of hybrid identities through migration and literary theory surrounding the discourses of testimonio fiction. This research also became the subject of a subsequent book chapter concerning artistic performances by Brazilian immigrants in New Orleans in Performing Brazil edited by Kathryn Sanchez and Severino Albuquerque.

My second book, Hispanic and Latino New Orleans: Immigration and Identity since the 18th Century (co-authored, LSU Press: 2015), is marked by my sense of activism and active involvement in the local Latin American community in New Orleans. I was awarded the Cervantes Award in 2016 for my contribution to the local Hispanic American Arts Foundation of New Orleans and the book was awarded the J.B Jackson book prize for contribution of the year to the historical and ethnic geography of the United States by the Association of American Geographers in 2015. This research inserts itself in the escalating debates about immigration, informing theories of assimilation, social capital accumulation, and identity formation. It provides the first study of how diverse Hispanic and Latino communities have helped to create the Crescent City as a distinctive US place over several centuries, with an emphasis on the period leading up to Katrina to the present.

Currently, my research has moved towards immigrant communities in the peripheral communities of São Paulo where, in the last decade, beginning in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, literary saraus (soirees) have become spaces that reconceptualize public relationships to literature. I am particularly interested in the body as a component of the literary text offering visual, auditory, and kinesthetic knowledge

Finally, my administrative responsibilities at Tulane have instilled an interest in researching interdisciplinary approaches to methodology that link critical studies of immigration to student mobility in study abroad through intercultural development theories, performance, film, literature, and popular music analysis. The impact of how external factors such as class size; study abroad program model; level of immersion; living situation (with locals, U.S. Americans or international students); second language acquisition; areas of study (major/minor); the extent to which students travel; and the occurrence of traumatic events affect students’ intercultural growth and development are covered in my current research in the field of international education.

Cynthia's career in education began in Peru, as an advocate for working children who were an average of 2-5 years behind in traditional schooling. For the past two decades, Cynthia has worked in diverse school environments throughout New Orleans, most recently through Tulane SOPA's PreK-12 Education Programs. Before Tulane, Cynthia taught Social Studies and English Language Arts at Ecole Bilingue de la Nouvelle-Orléans, where she led study abroad trips to Martinique and France, and Cultural Anthropology and Latin American Studies as a Professor of Practice at Loyola University. At Warren Easton High School, Cynthia led a cultural exchange program to Peru, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. In 2017, she was selected as one of ten educators from across the country as a Harvard University Globalizing the Classroom teaching fellow. In addition to her career as an educator, Cynthia worked in Washington, DC as Director of Advocacy and Community Relations for the DC Immigrant Coalition and as After School Programs Director at Casa del Pueblo Community Program.