Dur­ing Decem­ber 2012 five Prince­ton under­grad­u­ate stu­dents enrolled in LAS 401 Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies: The Pol­i­tics of Eth­nic­ity in Latin Amer­ica trav­eled to Guatemala.  This trip, led by Pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy J. Smith (Vis­it­ing Research Scholar in PLAS and Vis­it­ing Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­ogy and PLAS), was spon­sored with the gen­er­ous sup­port of PLAS, the Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­ogy and the Fred Fox Fund.  Con­tinue read­ing →

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux

Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity senior Flora Thomson-DeVeaux has met San­ti­ago Badar­i­otti Merlo again and again, in her courses and in her trav­els, though their paths have never crossed in real time.

Now Thomson-DeVeaux, the 2013 win­ner of the Mar­tin Dale Fel­low­ship, will spend the next year trac­ing the but­ler and writer’s foot­steps across the Amer­i­cas. She will delve deeper into his life and writ­ing, which inter­sect with sev­eral themes over the course of the 20th cen­tury — the rise and decline of two of Latin America’s biggest cities, eco­nomic and class his­tory, and atti­tudes about homo­sex­u­al­ity. She plans to turn her senior the­sis on Badar­i­otti Merlo, who was born in 1912 and died in 1994, into a full-length book.

Con­tinue Reading

Two Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity stu­dents and a recent alum­nus are spend­ing the sum­mer in Nicaragua and Brazil pur­su­ing new and cre­ative ideas for pro­mot­ing peace through grants from the Davis Projects for Peace. The pro­gram awarded more than $1 mil­lion to stu­dents from uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try to pur­sue inter­na­tional endeav­ors dur­ing sum­mer 2012.

Luciana Chamorro, a recent grad­u­ate of the Class of 2012 and a native of Nicaragua, received a $10,000 grant to help mem­bers of the com­mu­nity of Mata­galpa tell their sto­ries of the 1980s civil war through the project “Sto­ries of the Civil War: Empow­er­ing a Gen­er­a­tion Through Com­mu­nity Film­mak­ing.” High school and col­lege stu­dents, video artists, schol­ars and the broader pop­u­la­tion will col­lab­o­rate in a work­shop to pro­duce a video doc­u­men­tary, Chamorro said.

“The per­sonal nar­ra­tives of the war will col­lec­tively pro­vide a view of the recent local his­tory of Mata­galpa, with the premise that under­stand­ing the past is empow­er­ing and gives a com­mu­nity the tools to think about their present and reimag­ine their future,” Chamorro said. She hopes that such a project will help “rec­og­nize in the past the seeds of our cur­rent polit­i­cal and social issues, and use this under­stand­ing to build a more just and peace­ful future for Nicaragua.”

The team of Court­ney Crum­pler and Sarah Simon, both mem­bers of the Class of 2013, were awarded $10,000 to con­front issues of health, nutri­tion and vio­lence by mobi­liz­ing an under­priv­i­leged com­mu­nity, known as a favela, in Rio de Janeiro to build sus­tain­able rooftop gar­dens. Their project, “Cul­ti­vat­ing Restora­tive Spaces: Improv­ing Health and Reduc­ing Vio­lence Through Urban Gar­dens,” aims to bring youth and their fam­i­lies together while learn­ing about food through sus­tain­able gardening.

Read the full story

The annual Asso­ci­a­tion of Prince­ton Grad­u­ate Alumni (APGA) Teach­ing Awards are spon­sored by grad­u­ate alumni and are selected by Dean of the Grad­u­ate School William Rus­sel.  All will be hon­ored at the APGA’s Trib­ute to Teach­ing Recep­tion on Sat­ur­day, June 2. Each win­ner will receive $1,000.

Iwa Nawrocki received her joint bachelor’s degree in his­tory and phi­los­o­phy from McGill Uni­ver­sity in 2007 before com­ing to Prince­ton to study global and transna­tional his­tory, with a focus on mod­ern Latin Amer­ica and East­ern Europe. Nawrocki is being hon­ored for her assis­tance in teach­ing “A His­tory of the World Since 1300″ under the guid­ance of Jeremy Adel­man, the Wal­ter Samuel Car­pen­ter III Pro­fes­sor in Span­ish Civ­i­liza­tion and Cul­ture and pro­fes­sor of his­tory. In nom­i­nat­ing Nawrocki, Adel­man noted her abil­ity to engage the wide vari­ety of stu­dents enrolled in the expan­sive course. “Get­ting stu­dents moti­vated and involved requires energy, devo­tion and an abil­ity to range widely with­out being super­fi­cial. Iwa has all three,” Adel­man wrote. He com­mented on the excep­tion­ally high course eval­u­a­tions and com­pli­ments Nawrocki received from her stu­dents, writ­ing, “Con­sider the key­words of her stu­dents: engag­ing, com­fort­able, thought­ful, clar­i­fy­ing, kind, help­ful, encour­ag­ing. … Exactly the vocab­u­lary one wants to see in one’s teach­ing assis­tant, Iwa deliv­ers.” One stu­dent, describ­ing her ded­i­ca­tion to teach­ing, wrote that Nawrocki “let me know when my ini­tial work was not up to par, and she showed me what she expected of me in her class. Through her teach­ing I learned how to write an A-level his­tory paper, and I feel very pre­pared for any his­tory class to come.” Nawrocki expects to com­plete her Ph.D. in 2015.

Read the full story

Left: David Peña (right) dur­ing an intern­ship at the Mex­i­can embassy in Madrid, along­side Ernesto Sosa Gal­le­gos (left), a coun­selor in the polit­i­cal affairs divi­sion. Right: Squash player David Peña. (Photo at left cour­tesy of David Peña; photo at right by Bev­erly Schaefer)

For the nearly 1,000 stu­dents, or about 20 per­cent of the University’s under­grad­u­ates, who suit up for Princeton’s 38 var­sity sports teams, life as a student-athlete poses both oppor­tu­ni­ties and challenges.

Var­sity ath­letes have the chance to travel around the United States and even in other coun­tries for com­pe­ti­tion, while cre­at­ing deep bonds with their team­mates, hon­ing their tal­ents and learn­ing val­ues such as lead­er­ship and fair play. Student-athletes, such as David Peña fea­tured below, bal­ance their rig­or­ous ath­letic com­mit­ment with course­work and other extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties dur­ing their col­lege years.

David Peña, class of 2012

Home­town: Mex­ico City

Sport: Men’s squash

Aca­d­e­mic focus: Pol­i­tics major; pur­su­ing a cer­tifi­cate in Latin Amer­i­can studies

Other activ­i­ties: Prince­ton Junior Squash pro­gram; dor­mi­tory assis­tant; work­ing in the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library

Favorite Prince­ton sports moment: “Easy. Feb. 22, 2009, a 5–4 heart­break­ing loss against Trin­ity Col­lege dur­ing the National Team Cham­pi­onship Finals held at Prince­ton. The atmos­phere of play­ing for the cham­pi­onship, the sup­port dis­played by the school and the inten­sity of the six-hour-long game was inde­scrib­able; hard to believe unless you were present. Despite the loss, I am con­fi­dent the best is yet to come.”

On bal­anc­ing squash and other activities: “Like most ath­letes at the col­lege level, I have prac­ticed a sport since I was a child. I think one gets used to the rush and pres­sure of com­bin­ing ath­let­ics with aca­d­e­mics, fam­ily, social life and per­sonal projects. Although it is chal­leng­ing, hav­ing an orga­nized sched­ule is key to bal­ance all the activ­i­ties. In addi­tion, pro­fes­sors, coaches and peers have been will­ing to pro­vide advice and help me along the way.”

Biggest achieve­ment at Prince­ton out­side of squash: “Last year, with sup­port of the Office of Inter­na­tional Pro­grams, I had the oppor­tu­nity to work at the Mex­i­can embassy to Spain, in the polit­i­cal affairs divi­sion. I very much enjoyed the expe­ri­ence, and it made me con­sider per­haps a career path in diplo­macy work­ing for the Mex­i­can Sec­re­tariat of For­eign Affairs.”

Excerpted from this arti­cle pub­lished on the main Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity website

PLAS con­cen­tra­tor Alissa Escarce ’11 has been awarded the University’s Henry Richard­son Labouisse ’26 Prize, which will allow her to devote a year of ser­vice and research related to migrant work­ers’ rights.

The Labouisse fel­low­ship pro­vides $25,000 to each recip­i­ent to sup­port research in devel­op­ing coun­tries by grad­u­at­ing seniors who intend to pur­sue a career devoted to prob­lems of devel­op­ment and mod­ern­iza­tion. The prize was estab­lished in 1984.

Escarce, a his­tory major pur­su­ing a cer­tifi­cate in Latin Amer­i­can stud­ies, will spend the year in Mex­ico work­ing with Cen­tro de los Dere­chos del Migrante (CDM), a transna­tional work­ers’ rights law cen­ter. She will help expand the capac­ity of a new CDM office in the south­ern Mex­i­can state of Oax­aca by assist­ing with research on legal cases, prepar­ing edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als for out­reach efforts, includ­ing work­shops and a radio show, and per­form­ing admin­is­tra­tive duties. Escarce also will doc­u­ment the effects of the United States’ H-2 tem­po­rary visas on Oaxaca’s indige­nous Mix­tec com­mu­nity, in part through inter­views with local orga­niz­ers, work­ers and their families.

Con­tinue read­ing the full story

Dear Pro­gram in Latin Amer­i­can Studies,

As a ris­ing junior in the anthro­pol­ogy depart­ment, I was able to do an intern­ship in Rio de Janeiro with the Ful­bright Commission/Education USA because of PLAS’ gra­cious fund­ing towards my expenses to travel there. This intern­ship com­pletely changed my mind about study abroad and widened the scope of my intel­lec­tual inter­ests at Prince­ton. I want to per­son­ally thank the PLAS for giv­ing me this oppor­tu­nity and allow­ing me to have this won­der­ful experience.

I chose this par­tic­u­lar intern­ship because I have always been inter­ested in edu­ca­tion and edu­ca­tion pol­icy, espe­cially asso­ci­ated with under­priv­i­leged stu­dents in urban envi­ron­ments. I am also get­ting a cer­tifi­cate in the Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies depart­ment and my aca­d­e­mic inter­ests have included many top­ics in Latin Amer­ica. This par­tic­u­lar intern­ship seemed to fit not only my aca­d­e­mic inter­ests but also many pas­sions I have for my future goals. The Ful­bright Com­mis­sion serves as a type of col­lege coun­sel­ing for Brazil­ian stu­dents who wish to study in the U.S. As an intern for them, I had many projects assigned to me rang­ing from basic office work to research­ing edu­ca­tional pro­grams and pro­vid­ing advice from my expe­ri­ence from attend­ing a uni­ver­sity in the U.S.

Con­tinue read­ing →