The political, social, and cultural consequences of North American integration, including the foreign policy implications of regional economic integration for Canada, Mexico and the United States, the issue of labor rights and free trade in North American, and the impact of market opening and technological change on Mexican society and politics.
Political transition in the Americas in comparative perspective, including such specific topics as the dilemmas of political change in post-revolutionary regimes in Latin America, the role of political parties in democratization in the hemisphere, the QuŽbec question, the changing political role of the U.S. in hemispheric policies and politics.
Mexican and Latin American migration to the United States in comparative perspective, with special reference to the utilization of immigrant labor in the U.S. economy.
The political, social, and environmental consequences of economic restructuring in Mexico and Latin America, including agricultural modernization and the transformation of social relations in the Mexican countryside, the emergence of new patterns of state-society relations, and the relationship between economic restructuring and political liberalization.
The intensive study of American literature and art as expressions of national and cultural identity; the comparative functions of art as political expression in the U.S. and Latin America; the invention of a usable past in contemporary literature of the Americas.
Initiatives in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, Biology, Geology, Health Sciences, Engineering and in collaboration with the Colleges of Natural Sciences & Mathematics, Engineering, Pharmacy, Optometry and Law, and with the Communication Disorders Program in the School of Communication of the College of Humanities, Fine Arts & Communication.
The Center will also establish its own study-abroad programs on the graduate and undergraduate levels. Our first study-abroad program will be in Mexican literature and literary culture in QuerŽtaro in the summer of l997; the program is designed for advanced undergraduates and graduates in Humanities and Fine Arts, and for students in other disciplines who are interested in humanistic study. Eventually, the Center will administer a number of such programs, based in Latin American universities but tailored for UH students' needs.
The University of Houston has well-developed ties with a number of Latin American universities and other cultural and political institutions. The Center will build on existing institutional ties in order to increase interactions between the University of Houston and other American institutions.
A leader in the application of new computer and information technologies in education, the University of Houston is committed to working closely with scholars in Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean to establish new avenues of electronic communication and create on-line research archives and teaching resources.
An initial program to foster electronic communication is being established in conjunction with H-Net: Humanities On-Line. The University of Houston will host intensive training sessions for Latin American scholars in electronic communication and research systems. The plans for this training program call for bringing 30 Latin American humanists and social scientists to the university each summer for five years where they will be given intensive training by our staff, and work with UH faculty members in their own disciplines.
The Center will promote interaction between businesses in Houston and Latin America, especially in the areas of energy, environmental protection, medical technology, and telecommunications.
The Center will organize an on-going international, multidisciplinary forum for the presentation of new research and public policy perspectives dealing with Mexico and relations between Mexico and the United States.
The researchers-in-residence program will promote the research of senior scholars and the training of a new generation of academic specialists in the Americas. The program will bring together researchers from institutions in several countries, representing the humanities and social sciences, law, business, and interdisciplinary fields such as urban and regional studies, interAmerican studies, environmental studies, and international development studies.
It is also the aim of the Center for the Americas to encourage and support research residencies for University of Houston faculty in Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Responding to the rapidly growing need in Mexico and other Latin American countries for more academic and non-academic professionals with expertise on the United States, the center will conduct a multidisciplinary training program in U.S. studies. The center will invite Latin American academics, public officials, journalists, and representatives of non-governmental organizations, for an intensive four-week course on U.S. political, legal, economic, social, and cultural topics. This training programs is designed to stimulate the development of research and teaching programs in Latin America that focus on the United States.
In order to improve public understanding of Latin America and U.S.-Latin American relations, the center will organize lectures, briefings, and roundtable discussions on key issues affecting Latin America and bilateral relations between Latin America and the United States for journalists, public officials, business executives and labor leaders, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and the general public. Through public outreach activities, the center will seek to be of service to the local community of which it is a part.
The Center's publication program will seek to publish cutting-edge research on Mexico, Latin America, and U.S.-Latin American relations, which will be available to a broad readership in the United States, Latin America, and elsewhere. Most Center publications will result from lectures and symposia held under the center's auspices, and from the work of its visiting research fellows and affiliated faculty.
The program's central theme involves the creation of distinctive American cultures as a result of the complex relations and borrowings among African, Asian, European and indigenous peoples and cultures. Specially designed to take advantage of Houston's distinctive location and resources, the American Cultures Program combines four focus areas:
The critical analysis of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and national identity in North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean.
The historical study of the collision and cultural hybridization of African, Asian, European, Hispanic, and indigenous cultures in the Southwest and critical examination of the region as "contested terrain" in which diverse peoples have struggled over resources, language, culture, politics, and economic control.
Economic, political, social, and cultural developments that transcend national boundaries, including migration, urbanization, colonial legacies, postcolonial struggles, modernization, underdevelopment, transnational communities, religious movements, nationalism and nation building.
Critical analysis of the hemisphere's literary and aesthetic traditions and belief system, including the study of media, film, literature, material culture, popular cultures, social thought, intellectual movements, and forms of modernity in the arts. Particular emphasis will be placed on the problematic ways in which different kinds of minority or subnational groups are represented in relation to hegemonic or national communities.
