Photos

Brazil Week 2019 featured a Study Abroad Roundtable in which students shared their experiences in Brazil.

Brazil Week 2017 opening reception with students in Owen School of Management’s Americas MBA program and faculty partners from FIA Business School in São Paulo.

Latino and Latina Studies major Pedro Rosales-Díaz at the signing of his his memoir “Dreams Through Shadow and Light” in 2022. The memoir tells his coming-of-age story by exploring his queer love, mental health struggles, and his Latinx identity.

CLACX participates anually in the Día de los Muertos festival at Cheekwood Estates & Gardens. Here, a table set up by CLACX (then CLAS) is modeled after an ofrenda with pan de muerto, marigolds, and calaca.

Dr. Marshall Eakin and Dr. Jane Landers participate in a conversation “Guerrilla Archiving: The Preservation of Afro-Brazilian History” during CLACX’s annual Brazil Week. The week-long celebration concluded with a roundtable discussion on historical preservation featuring Marshall Eakin (History) and Jane Landers (History). Entitled “Guerrilla Archiving: The Preservation of Afro Brazilian History,” the discussion focused on the Societies Digital Archive (SSDA) project, which digitizes secular and ecclesiastical records connected to the history of African slaves and their descendants in Brazil and across Latin America.

Guatemala Scholars Network (GSN) meeting at the Cooperación Española in Antigua, July 11–13, 2019. Vanderbilt is in the administrative home to the GSN, with CLACX Executive Director Avery Dickins de Giron and CLACX Administrator Alma Paz-Sanmiguel helping organize the biannual conference. The first GSN conference was held at Vanderbilt in 2008; 2019 marked the fifth time the international conference was held. Pictured are GSN Board Members in 2019: Kedron Thomas, Tatiana Paz-Lemus, Meghan Farley-Webb, Alma Paz-Sanmiguel, Lisa Maya Knauer, Lourdes Gallardo, Aracely Martinez, Avery Dickins de Giron.

Student Research Roundtable, 2019: Graduate students who received Tinker Field Research Grants or Simon Collier Travel Grants present the results of their summer research each Spring semester. The 2019 roundtable featured Damien Domenack, Alexandre Pelegrino, Alejandro Botia, and Adam Wolsky.

Avery Dickins de Girón gives a tour of the Latin American Garden to Metro Nashville Public School teachers as part of a professional development workshop, “Amaranth, Chia, Chocolate & the Aztec: A Hands-On Exploration of Latin American Plants” in September, 2017.

Avery Dickins de Giron Apr 6 at 9:47 AM CLAS hosted renowned Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat in February 2018. Her trip to Nashville included a visit to the Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library. Pictured from left: CLAS Outreach Coordinator Colleen McCoy, CLAS Executive Director Avery Dickins de Girón, Edwidge Danticat, and CLACX Administrator Alma Paz-Sanmiguel.

Américas Award Ceremony at the Library of Congress in 2017. CLACX co-coordinated the Américas Award with Tulane University’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies from 2010-2021. The award recognizes outstanding children’s and young adult books that portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. The annual awards ceremony was conducted in conjunction with workshop for educators to provide strategies for incorporation into K-12 classrooms across the US.

Mexico Country Box (2019), part of our outreach efforts to support K-12 educators. Teachers check out curated country boxes containing curated materials for use in their classrooms.

Outreach Coordinator Colleen McCoy and CLAS graduate student Megan Skaggs share educational materials at the Consortium for Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP) with teachers attending the National Council for Social Studies annual meeting in 2017.

Leaders in the study of Mayan languages meet at Vanderbilt in 2017. Pakal B’alam Rodriguez, Judie Maxwell (Tulane University), Ambrosia (Ixnal) Cuma Chavez led by Marieke Sattler (Vanderbilt University) and Malcolm Miguel Botto (Brigham Young University) leading the Kaqchikel program

CLACX hosted a professional develop workshop on volcanoes and rainforests in Latin America for K-12 STEM teachers in 2017, as part of the center’s workshop series. Malu Jorge (Earth and Environmental Sciences/Biological Sciences) discussed tropical ecology, biodiversity, and conservation of rainforests in Latin America. Jennifer Bradham, a former teacher and doctoral student at the time, shared field investigations conducted in 2016 and provided the educators with tools for project-based learning.

Since 2012, CLACX has hosted a photo competition of photos taken throughout Latin America. The photos are displayed in a public space (here, Buttrick Hall is pictured), to give voters the opportunity to see each entrance.

Curator’s Talk with LAS Librarian Paula Covington on the Manuel Zapata Olivella collection (2020)

From 2017-2022, CLAS hosted an annual Haiti Week to celebrate and highlight Haitian culture, language, food, and literature. In this photo of Haiti Week 2020, graduate student Danielle Dorvil leads a cooking workshop with students.

Activst Sylvia Mendez holds the Americas Award winner title at the National Council of Social Studies meeting in 2019.

Metro Parks recognizes the diversity of cultures and traditions in Nashville with their Celebrate Nashville festival, which takes place in Centennial Park each October. The festival celebrated its twenty-third year in 2019, featuring a marketplace, food, dancing, and live music from cultures around the world, as well as a global village. Since 2010, the center hosted a booth at Celebrate Nashville each year to highlight the unique characteristics of a country in Latin America. Pictured are graduate students Miguel Cuj and Megan Skaggs, with CLAS Administrator Alma Paz-Sanmiguel.

Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) Learning Summit in LAPOP offices in Commons in 2020.

Nashville Public Television interviewed Avery Dickins de Girón in 2019 about medicinal plants housed in the Latin American Garden, and featured the interview on their “Volunteer Gardener” series in March 2020.

Frank Robinson shares his knowledge of Cuba with students at Jackson State Community College as part of CLAS’s Title VI outreach to post-secondary institutions.

Elvira Aballi Morell, doctoral student in Spanish and Portuguese, received a grant from Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for a new initiative, “HEART – Unifying Communities through Language and Textile Art.” The project encourages members of Nashville’s Latinx community to come together and around three objectives: creative writing, English as a second language, and textile art. On this Textile Workshop session we sponsored Fatima Gonzalez Solano (Universidad de Guadalajara) to teach the group the Tenango Mexican style. (2022)

Mariana Rodríguez conducts surveys for LAPOP in Venezuela in 2014.

Anna Tybinko, Ana Luiza Moraes Soares, and Jesús Ruiz presented their research at CLACX’s New Faculty Series in Fall 2022. All three were part of the university’s Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program.

Conexión Américas’ The Latin Party in 2022. CLACX administrator Alma Paz-Sanmiguel (far right) attended with students Lorely Chavez, Allie Reichert, and Madi Crow.

CLAS graduate students Megan Skaggs and Sagen Eatwell promote the center’s K’iche’ Mayan programs at Vanderbilt’s undergraduate study abroad fair. Both Skaggs and Eatwell obtained a dual degrees in LAS (M.A.) and International Education Policy and Management (M.Ed.), and both studied K’iche’ Mayan at Vanderbilt and in Guatemala through the Mayan Language Institute hosted by Tulane and CLAS in 2019.

In April of 2022, CLACX supported OZ Arts Nashville to host Cuban dance group Malpaso. CLACX staff, students, and friends attended.

Ninth grade high school students participating in the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt (SSMV) visited the Latin American Garden in October and April. Avery Dickins de Girón gave the students a tour focused on biodiversity, medicinal plants, and global staple crops.

In 2022, CLACX Outreach Coordinator Colleen McCoy (far right) and Denise Woltering, Outreach Coordinator at Tulane University, led educators on a week-long professional development trip to Panama. CLACX and Tulane’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies have partnered on summer institutes for educators since 2014; the 2022 institute abroad was titled, “Reflections from Panama.”