Vision
The Global Latinidades Project seeks a world where all people have the opportunity to learn about each other and with each other pursuant to mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation to build an egalitarian society in harmony with all sentient beings, earth, and the cosmos.
Mission
The Global Latinidades Project was founded in 2017 in the English Department of the University of California at Santa Barbara. It seeks to map Latinidades—Latinx history, culture, identity, and politics—in local and global contexts, emphasizing new, evolving, and possible future developments, challenges, and opportunities in the field of Latinx Studies as well as intersecting and allied fields and areas.
The Global Latinidades Project pursues an expansive intersectional, comparative, transdisciplinary, and transhemispheric approach to the recovery and analysis of Latinidades in the interstices between Area Studies and Ethnic Studies, as well as the spaces beyond these fields in dialogue with Global Studies. Specifically, this initiative focuses on unique Latinidades that are synthesized through cross-cultural encounters, transversal dialogues, and transculturation with peoples and cultures throughout the world over time and place, including Africa and the Mediterranean, Asia and the Pacific Islands, subaltern Europe, and under-examined areas of the Americas.
The Global Latinidades Project's research and programming explore evolving Latinx cultural and ethnic hybridities; new Latinx spiritual and cultural identities and communities; unique Latinx global travelers and expatriates; new immigrant populations; wide-ranging localized and globalized political ideologies; and related Latinx ontologies and epistemologies. The Global Latinidades Project thus joins ongoing conversations about what and who constitutes Latinx in the global south and worldwide, and about the ways we study and engage with these communities.
Institutes & Initiatives
The Global Latinidades Project consists of multiple academic as well as community-based priorities:
- Collaborative activist-scholar projects facilitated through five research clusters (Emerging Latinidades; AfroLatinidades; Local/Global Revolutionary Theory & Praxis; Art, Culture & Revolution; Insurgent Teaching, Learning & Praxis)
- Undergraduate and graduate student mentoring, research support, and grants-in-aid
- Curriculum development, advanced mentoring, and community-based service-learning
- Community outreach, partnerships, and programming
The Global Latinidades Project's funded institutes and initiatives include the following:
- Global Latinidades Consortium (in partnership between UC Santa Barbara, UC Riverside, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Merced)
- AfroLatinidades Institute (includes Advanced Mentoring Program in partnership with Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Texas Southern University)
- Voces Nuevas Latinx Author Series (in partnership with UCSB Multicultural Center and El Centro Santa Barbara)
- Barrio Internship Program (in partnership with El Centro Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara County Immigrant Legal Defense Center)
- Local/Global Pedagogy and Praxis Workshops (includes Community Activist Workshop in partnership with the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy)
Multimedia projects include the following:
- Raza World Visions Radio Show on 91.9 FM in Santa Barbara
- Raza Oral History and Videography Project
History
The Global Latinidades Project was founded by the Robert and Liisa Erickson Presidential Chair in English, which was endowed through a generous donation by John Arnhold and the Arnhold Foundation in partnership with the University of California Regents. Resources from the Erickson Presidential Chair in English were used to establish the center and to seek external support for the implementation and operation of its constituent institutes and initiatives. The Global Latinidades Project also has received support from the University of California Office of President's Research Grants Program Office; UCSB Humanities and Fine Arts Division and Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters and Sciences; UCSB Graduate Division; UCSB Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; UCSB English Department; and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Global Latinidades Project also has received support from multiple units and organizations at UCSB such as the Multicultural Center, and also includes collaborative partnerships and mutual aid in solidarity with grassroots community organizations El Centro Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara County Immigrant Legal Defense Center.