LACS welcomes interim director
The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) is pleased to welcome Kate Jenckes as the LACS interim director for the 2018-2019 academic year, effective July 1, 2018.
Kate Jenckes is professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature (RLL), and has been at U-M since 2005. When she first arrived, she had an affiliation with LACS and helped organize a number of events with the center. Her research focuses on the intersections of aesthetics, philosophy, and politics in Chilean and Argentine literature, art, and critical thought. She has recently published Witnessing Beyond the Human: Addressing the Alterity of the Other in Post-coup Chile and Argentina (SUNY Press, 2017). In addition to her work within RLL, she has served on the LACS advisory board, U-M Senate Assembly, worked with Michigan Humanities Emerging Research Scholars Program (MICHHERS), and is currently on the Rackham executive board.
I am thrilled and honored to be involved in the leadership of this exciting international and interdisciplinary center. I am quickly learning the extent to which LACS serves as a multifaceted and deeply consequential bridge that connects ideas and initiatives within the university, with individuals and institutions around the world, and also, importantly, between the activities and resources of higher education and the non-academic public, both locally and in underfunded Hispanic-serving institutions across the country. The continued support from the Department of Education for being a comprehensive area studies research center is well deserved—congratulations are in order for Victoria Langland and her incredible staff!
