Director, Faculty and Instructors, and Staff

Patsy Lewis

Director
Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs

Patsy Lewis is a Visiting Professor and Faculty Fellow of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University. She is a graduate of Cambridge University (Mphil, PhD.) and the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica (BA). Before coming to Brown she was Professor of Regional Integration and Small States Development at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Her work explores the development challenges of small Caribbean states, with a particular focus on regional integration, globalization, trade, agriculture, migration and environmental and political crises. Her office hours are on Wednesdays from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Please register here.  

• +1 401 863 6429
• patsy_lewis@brown.edu

Erica Durante

Director of Undergraduate Studies
Visiting Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Erica Durante is a visiting Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University. She has held the position of tenured associate professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Louvain (Belgium). Her research has focused on European and Latin American literature, on literature and globalization, and on francophone writers of Africa and the Caribbean. Funded by the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, she has compiled the edition of Borges’ personal library in the precious Borges’ archive in Buenos Aires. She is the author of the books "Air Travel Fiction and Film: Cloud People" (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), "Questions de poétique et d’écriture: Dante au miroir de Valéry et de Borges" (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008), and "Mallarmé et moi" (Pisa: ETS, 1999). She has edited "Los Meridianos de la Globalización" (Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2015) and "Le Double: littérature, arts, cinéma. Nouvelles approaches" (with A. Dehoux) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2018), and has published numerous articles in the fields of Comparative Literature and Global Studies. 

• erica_durante@brown.edu

Kate Goldman

Center Manager

Kate Goldman holds a B.A. in Political Science and Modern Languages from Union College and an M.A. in Spanish American Literature from Rutgers University. Prior to joining CLACS, she worked as a translator, editor and teacher in the United States and Chile. In addition to her work at CLACS, Kate is on the leadership team of Respond Crisis Translation, serving as Head of University and Academic Partnerships, and is one of the leaders of Engaged East Greenwich, a non-partisan organization focused on increasing political engagement at the local level.

• 401-863-2645
• katherine_goldman@brown.edu

Felipe Felix Mendez

Student Assistant

Felipe Félix Méndez ‘22 is a rising junior from Panama and Uruguay concentrating in International and Public Affairs (Development). His interest in Latin America and the Caribbean comes from his family ties to several countries in the region, as well as lived experiences growing up and studying in an international school in Panama City. Felipe came to Brown to explore his passion for finding pragmatic, inclusive, and interdisciplinary solutions to the complex challenges facing the world today. To him, geographical, cultural and temporal context is a crucial aspect in determining the effectiveness of policies. Thus, Felipe looks to engage with these ideas through courses taught by CLACS-affiliated scholars, the Center’s programming, and Portuguese language classes. At Brown, he has served as Teaching Assistant of “Economic Development in Latin America,” member of the Watson Institute’s Student Advisory Committee, and volunteered as a Tutor with the Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment Program. Outside of academics, he enjoys listening to and playing music, and watching football (soccer).

• felipe_felix_mendez@brown.edu

Adriana Rodriguez

Student Assistant

Adriana Rodriguez '21 is a recent alumna with a B.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Political Science from Teaneck, New Jersey. Her decision to concentrate in LACA arose from her interest in studying her own Puerto Rican and Dominican heritage - specifically the history of U.S. intervention and imperialism on the two islands, as well as in Latin America and the Caribbean more broadly. Adriana has completed an honors thesis in LACA, which addresses the question of how community care both radically/materially and ideologically disrupt colonial constructs, with a specific focus on Puerto Rican political activism in the diaspora and on the island. She also participated in the Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad program in Havana, Cuba during the fall semester of 2019 and loves (can’t stop) talking about her experience there.

• adriana_rodriguez@brown.edu

Caiya Sanchez-Strauss

Student Assistant

Caiya Sanchez-Strauss '21.5 is a second semester senior from northeast Ohio double concentrating in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Africana Studies. They initially became interested in Spanish, Latin America, and social movements of the Global South via their own family history and decided to concentrate in LACA because of a sustained interest in anti imperialist, abolitionist social movements in the region. They engage with these topics via an interdisciplinary approach combining Black feminist + queer theory, historical materialism, and abolitionist speculative fiction. During their time at Brown, Caiya has been involved with teaching English to adults in Providence (English for Speakers of Other Languages), local organizing on and off campus (Brown Immigrant Rights Coalition), and other migrant justice and anti-police efforts. They also cite their semester abroad in Cuba in the spring of 2020 as one of their most formative experiences at Brown and couldn't recommend the program enough! 

• caiya_sanchez-strauss@brown.edu