Director, Faculty, and Staff

Jessaca Leinaweaver

Director
Professor of Anthropology

Jessaca Leinaweaver is a cultural anthropologist who conducts research in Peru and the Peruvian diaspora. Her first book, The Circulation of Children (Duke University Press, 2008), based on research carried out in Ayacucho, Peru, examined informal child fostering in the urban Andes and its intersections with international adoption policies. Her second book, Adoptive Migration (Duke University Press, 2013), based on research carried out in Madrid, Spain, contrasted transnational adoption and family migration from Peru to Spain. She has also done collaborative research in Yauyos, Peru, with colleagues and students at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. Her current project is a study of aging, social responsibility, and demographic thinking in Peru, examining the marginalization of older, impoverished Latin Americans and the effectiveness of government proposals for improving their conditions. 

• +1 401 863 6429
• jessaca_leinaweaver@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 Italian, French, Spanish and Latin American literature, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era, and on contemporary francophone and hispanophone literature of Africa and the Caribbean. She has published extensively in comparative literature, genetic criticism and Global Studies. 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 Mallarmé et moi (Pisa: ETS, 1999) and Questions de poétique et d’écriture: Dante au miroir de Valéry et de Borges (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008), and 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). Her current research focuses on literature and globalization and she is completing a new monograph titled Destination Global: Air Travel in Contemporary Film and Fiction. To make an appointment with Erica, click here.

• 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.

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

Katherine Chavez

Student Assistant

Katherine Chavez is a third-year undergraduate student at Brown, where she intends to study Art History (with a focus on Latin American/Latinx art) and Visual Art (with a focus on printmaking). A native of Los Angeles, California, she has worked at various arts institutions in the city, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), The Box Gallery Los Angeles, and the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) Gallery as part of the Getty Center's Multicultural Undergraduate Internship Program, where she did research for their upcoming exhibition on Argentinian artist León Ferrari. Most recently, she worked as an artists' assistant for the SOY Artista program at Self-Help Graphics and Art in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, a historic community arts space founded during the Chicano Movement. She has been involved with the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP), is a Co-Chair for the student organization Better World x Design, and assists with youth arts classes at the local organization ¡CityArts!  

• 401-863-2645
• katherine_chavez1@brown.edu

Andrea Vega

Student Assistant

Andrea Vega Troncoso is a junior at Brown, double-concentrating in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Environmental Studies, with a track in environmental justice. She grew up in Santo Domingo, República Dominicana and moved to the U.S. two years ago. She has done environmental, political, and girls’ empowerment work in the DR. Andrea currently assists with research in the Climate and Development Lab and serves as co-president for Dominican Students at Brown. She’s also on the e-board for SOMOS, a Brown/RISD Latinx literary magazine. She's working on research regarding climate justice in the non-sovereign Caribbean, particularly as it pertains to injustices in post-hurricane response and recovery. In the summers, Andrea spends her time as a Doris Duke Conservation Scholar at the University of Michigan, a program that focuses on diversity and justice within the environmental field.

• andrea_vega@brown.edu