Roger Thayer Stone Center For Latin American Studies

Tulane University

Latin American Resource Center

Click on curriculum unit title in order to register/log-in for complete access.
If you encounter a problem accessing these resources, please email us at crcrts@tulane.edu or call us at 504.862.3143.

Online Curricula created BY teachers FOR teachers -These resources were developed in collaboration with K-12 educators.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

  • ¡Huelga! A Social Studies Unit on the Farm Worker Movement – This curricular unit was developed by Erin Lierl, who currently teaches part-time in a New Orleans charter high school and is pursuing her M.A. at Tulane University’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies. The unit is centered on history and civics themes relevant to migrant farm labor movements. Lessons can be used as they are written, or they can be adjusted to meet the needs of each classroom. This curricular unit contains six (6) 75-minute lessons in Social Studies for grades 6-8.

ENVIRONMENT

  • Plátanos: Learning about Bananas – A curriculum guide developed by a select group of teachers in 2005 to be used with the film, Banana Split, winner of LARC’s Biennial Latin American Environmental Media Festival. This curriculum guide was designed to be used for K-12 although most units are developed for high school. Check out the film from the LARC Lending Library.

CULTURE AND IDENTITY

  • Haitian Folktales – A K-2 Curriculum Unit about a Haitian folktale, Tezin: le poisson d’eau douce: Conte de la tradition haitenne (Tezin: Freshwater Fish: A Folktale in the Haitian Tradition) which exposes students to Haiti, folktales, the French language, the importance of the environment, and performance.

  • Introduction to Brazil – A set of curricula for the High School classroom which aims to integrate teaching about Brazil and the Portuguese language into the Spanish classroom. Provides opportunities to learn about Brazilian language, geography, and culture in an interdisciplinary classroom.

  • Signs of Change: A K-12 Curriculum on the Contemporary Maya – This curriculum packet, developed by participants in the Stone Center’s 2012 Summer Teacher Institute in Guatemala, includes art, English, and Spanish curricula for K-12 students about the ancient and modern Maya. Please also see the materials from the 2013 Tulane Maya Symposium Teacher Workshop which presented information about the curriculum writing process and the trip on which the curriculum is based.

  • Through the Lens: Teaching Latin America through Film – In collaboration with Vanderbilt University and Millsaps College, the Stone Center for Latin American Studies welcomed 22 educators from across the United States to an intensive film institute exploring the diversity of Latin America through film. Hosted at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi on June 5th through 10th, 2011. This resource consists of a recommended list of films to teach about Latin America for the K-12 classroom.

CUBAN HISTORY, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE

TEACH THE MAYA with these resources created by LARC!

  • Introducing the Ancient Maya to the Classroom – This curriculum packet, developed by archaeologist Diane Davies in 2010, provides an introduction to the study of the Ancient Maya and suggests several classroom activities as well as additional resources.

  • Maya Culture in the Classroom – These materials were assembled for the 2002 Tulane Maya Symposium Teacher Workshop and provide information about the Ancient Maya and a variety of activities to introduce the Maya into the K-12 classroom.

ONLINE CURRICULA BY LARC

  • Race, Power, and Identity in Cuba: Past and Present Primary Source Activities – In this activity-based curriculum, students utilize primary sources to explore how structural racism shaped experiences and identities of Afro-Cuban communities. This curriculum was inspired by Tulane University’s Summer 2017 Cuban Culture & Society K-12 Teacher Institute and created by the curriculum specialists at Primary Source. Adaptable for high school Spanish, Language Arts, Social Studies, Visual Arts, and Art History.

  • Beyond the Book – A curriculum guide to Mayeros: A Yucatec Maya Family.

  • Día de los Muertos Across the Americas – This curriculum packet, an ongoing project, introduces Dí­a de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, in different parts of the Americas. The packet includes background information on various Day of the Dead traditions, classroom activities, and external resources. A great resource which can be used for a variety of grade levels.

  • Connecting New Orleans and Latin America – This curriculum introduces the longstanding connections between New Orleans and Latin America. The curriculum focuses on historic connections and the importance of trade and immigration to such issues.

  • Jewish Latin America – This workshop explored the diversity of the Latin American experience by looking at the impact of Jewish immigrants on the social, economic, political and, especially, the intellectual and cultural life of Latin America. Hosted at Tulane University on January 14, 2012.

  • Land of Diversity – A comprehensive high school social studies course on Latin America consisting of 19 units highlighting the history, geography, and culture of the region.

  • Malaika’s Costume – A Grade 3 curriculum based on the 2017 Américas Award Honorable Mention book Malaika’s Costume written by Nadia L. Hohn and illustrated by Irene Luxbacher (Simon and Schuster, 2016).

  • Los tres grandes – A complete lecture and slide show featuring the works of the Mexican Muralists: Rivera, Siqueros, and Orozco.

  • Yum! ¡Mmmm! ¡Que Rico! – A Grade 2-3 curriculum based on the Américas Award winning book, Yum! ¡Mmmm! ¡Que Rico!, written by Pat Mora and illustrated by Rafael López (New York: Lee & Low, 2007).

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Upcoming Events

China's Belt and Road Initiative in Latin America: New Wine in Old Bottles?

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The Center for Inter-American Policy and Research will be hosting Dr. Matt Ferchen for a talk titled China’s belt and Road Initiative in Latin America: New Wine in Old Bottles? on January 23, 2019 at noon.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted global attention since it was first introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2013. Despite the hype and anxiety surrounding the BRI’s apparent extension to the region, it remains unclear whether its rollout there will change entrenched patters, challenges, and dysfunctions in the China-LAC (Latin American and Caribbean) relationship or merely deepen them. Moreover, at a time of growing US-China strategic rivalry, the expansion of BRI-themed deal-making in LAC is already playing into growing major-power competition and tension.

Matt Ferchen is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy where he runs the China and the Developing World Program. From 2008-2017 Ferchen was the first and only full-time foreign member of the International Relations Department at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Dr. Ferchen has a Masters in Latin America and China Studies from John Hopkins SAIS (1997) and a Ph.D. in Comparative Politics and International Relations from Cornell (2008).

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to cipr@tulane.edu.

Sociology Colloquium Series to host talk by Javier Auyero on collusion and violence in Argentina

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Join the Sociology Department at Tulane University in welcoming Dr. Javier Auyero, for a talk titled The Ambivalent State: Collusion and Violence in Latin America on Thursday, January 24, at 3:30 PM.

Drawing upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a poor high-crime neighborhood of Argentina and documentary evidence from court cases involving drug traffickers and police officers, this talk examines the clandestine connections between participants in the illicit drug trade and members of the state security forces – and their impact on skyrocketing urban violence. The presentation unpacks the much-referred to (but seldom scrutinized) content of police-criminal collusion reconstructing the resources, relational practices, and processes at its core. The talk makes its three-fold argument by way of empirical demonstration: a) illicit relationships between police agents and traffickers serve the latter to achieve a quasi-monopoly in the use of force over a territory that is central to the prosecution of their illegal trade, b) clandestine relationships between police officers and traffickers feed the systemic violence that characterizes the market of illegal drugs and contributes to localized violence, and c) police-trafficker collusion fosters widespread skepticism about law-enforcement among residents of low-income violent neighborhoods.

Dr. Javier Auyero is the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas-Austin. He is the author of Poor People’s Politics, Contentious Lives, Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina, and Patients of the State. Together with Débora Swistun, he co-authored Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. His new book, In Harm’s Way: The dynamics of urban violence, co-authored with María Fernanda Berti, was recently published by Princeton University Press. He is also the editor of Invisible City: Life and Labor in Austin, Texas (published this year by University of Texas Press), and co-editor – with Philippe Bourgois and Nancy Scheper-Hughes – of Violence at the Urban Margins (published this year by Oxford University Press).

Stone Center for Latin American Studies to host 11th annual Workshop on Field Research Methods

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Join us at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies for the 11th Annual Weekend Workshop on Field Research Methods on Saturday, January 26, 2019. The deadline to apply for the workshop is January 15, 2019.

How will you get the data you need for your thesis or dissertation? Do you envision immersing yourself for months in the local culture, or tromping the hills and farms seeking respondents? Sorting through dusty archives? Observing musicians at work in the plaza? Downloading and crunching numbers on a computer? For any of these approaches: How might you get there, from here?

This workshop aims to help you approach your data collection and analysis for your thesis or dissertation topic, and to adapt and refine your topic to be more feasible. You will take your research project ideas to the next stop—whatever that may be, include raising travel grants. Learn to:

  • Plan more efficiently, feasible, and rewarding fieldwork
  • Prepare more compelling and persuasive grant proposals
  • Navigate choices of research methods and course offerings on campus
  • Become a better research and fieldwork team-member

Format
This is an engaged, hands-on, informal workshop. Everyone shares ideas and participates. We will explore and compare research approaches, share experiences and brainstorm alternatives. You will be encouraged to think differently about your topic, questions, and study sites as well as language preparation, budgets, and logistics. The participatory format is intended to spark constructive new thinking, strategies, and student networks to continue learning about (and conducting) field research.

Who is leading this?
Laura Murphy, PhD, faculty in Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, and affiliate faculty to the Stone Center for Latin American Studies.

Who is this for?
This workshop is targeted to Stone Center graduate students as well as graduate students from other programs (GOHB, CCC, humanities, sciences, and others) if space is available. The workshop will be particularly helpful for those who envision research with human subjects.

Sign up
Sign up as soon as you can! Apply by January 15, 2019, at the latest to confirm your stop. Send an email with the following details:

  • Your name
  • Department and Degree program
  • Year at Tulane
  • Prior experience in research, especially field research
  • Academic training in research design and methods
  • Include a 1-paragraph statement of your current research interests and immediate plans/needs (i.e. organize summer field research)

Light breakfast and lunch will be provided. Not for credit.

For more information and/or to apply: Contact Laura Murphy or Jimmy Huck.

K-12 Professional Development Opportunity: Resources and Pedagogy on Latin American Studies

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On Saturday, January 26, 2019, join us at the Louisiana Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) Annual Meeting for a professional development opportunity. This year’s meeting will include a presentation on pedagogy by Lolla Blas Troncoso, a middle school Spanish Instructor at the Isidore Newman School and a session on the Latin American Resources available at Tulane University’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies by Denise Woltering-Vargas, Senior Program Manager at Tulane University’s Stone Center Latin American Studies.

This conference is free and open to all educators and membership in the AATSP is not required. Please RSVP as space is limited. Please RSVP to Stephanie Davis.

The event will be held in the Reynolds Room at the Isidore Newman School. Please use the Loyola Street Lower School entrance, located at 5320 Loyola, the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Loyola Street.

K-12 Educator Workshop at the Audubon Zoo: Rescuing the Forests

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Tulane University’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies in collaboration with the Audubon Nature Institute will be hosting a K-12 educator workshop Rescuing the Rainforest at the Audubon Zoo on Saturday, February 2, 2019. Rescuing the Rainforest will focus on conservation efforts and environment of Central American rainforests. This workshop is a great way to learn how to bring real world science into your classroom. Activities will incorporate a variety of sciences and other subjects including: art, environmental science, cultural components, anthropology, computer science and technology. While it is geared for middle and high school teachers, this workshop is open to all educators formal and informal. We are delighted to have Dr. Katharine Jack, Professor of Anthropology and Director of Environmental Studies at Tulane University, join us for this workshop.

Please register here. The cost is $45.00 per participant. Lunch will be provided.

Please contact educationprograms@auduboninstitute.org for additional information.

Latin American Library to host Brazilian photographer João Farkas for talk and exhibit Amazônia Ocupada

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The Latin American Library in collaboration with the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, and the Departments of History and Spanish & Portuguese at Tulane University will be hosting an exhibit opening and talk titled Amazônia Ocupada, featuring Brazilian photographer João Farkas on Friday, February 8, 2019. The evening will begin with a conversation between João Farkas and professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Christopher Dunn. A reception will follow.

Amazônia Ocupada features the work of Brazilian photographer João Farkas, who documented the mass migration of workers from throughout Brazil who came to the Amazon basin in the 1980s and 1990s to try their luck in gold mining, logging and cattle ranching, often with devastating effects on the environment and the indigenous peoples of the region. The exhibit also includes rare books, maps, and other material from the special collections of The Latin American Library tracing Western conceptualizations of the Amazon region beginning with the earliest post-contact explorations in the 16th century to 20th century narratives about the region.

João Farkas is one of Brazil’s leading documentary and environmental photographers with projects that document life in the coastal village of Trancoso, Bahia, the carnival masks of Maragojipe, Bahia, and the world’s largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal, as well as the occupation of the Amazon.

A related symposium featuring historians and anthropologists of the Amazon region will be held on Saturday February 9, 2019, in Jones Hall 100A, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. More information forthcoming.

These events are sponsored by The Latin American Library, the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, and the Departments of History and Spanish & Portuguese at Tulane University.

Photo credit: João Farkas Amazonia