Administration

Jane Landers, Interim Director, 2011-2012

Jane Landers is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History,and Interim Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (2011-2012). She is the author of Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions (Cambridge, Mass., 2010) (Urbana, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2005) . She co-authored the college textbook, The Atlantic World: A History, 1400-1888 (Harlan Davidson, 2007) and is the editor of Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida (Gainesville, 2000, 2001) and Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the A mericas (London, 1996). She is co-editor of Slaves, Subjects and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, 2006), and The African American Heritage of Florida (Gainesville, 1995). She has published essays in The American Historical Review, Slavery and Abolition, The New West Indian Guide, The Americas, Colonial Latin American Historical Review and a variety of anthologies and edited volumes.  She has  consulted on a variety of archaeological projects, documentary films, web sites, and museum exhibits related to the African Diaspora.  She directs the ESSSS project at Vanderbilt which mounts digital preservation projects in Brazil, Cuba, and Colombia and also the FIPSE/CAPES program which exchanges students between Vanderbilt and several Brazilian universities.

Avery Dickins de Girón, Executive Director (email)

Avery earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Vanderbilt in 2008. Her research examines international development programs in Q’eqchi’ Maya villages as well as the security guard industry in Guatemala. She teaches VISAGE Guatemala, and her duties at CLAS include grant writing, reporting, budget oversight and faculty relations. She enjoys swimming, cooking, and spending time with her husband Carlos and daughters Lucia and Elisa McPhail.

Claire González, Outreach Coordinator (email)

Claire González received her B.A. in French and Spanish (1992) and her M.Ed. (1995). A Spanish and French teacher for 16 years, as well as native Nashvillian, Claire has travelled extensively in Mexico and throughout Latin America and at some point has taught every almost every grade K-12.   At the Center for Latin American Studies, she works with local and regional school systems to offer teacher workshops and summer institutes, helps to facilitate K-12 curriculum development around Latin America, and strengthens business and community ties to the Center.

Alma Paz-Sanmiguel, Adminstrative Assistant (email)

Alma Paz-Sanmiguel joined CLAS in July as Administrative Assistant. She comes to us with a background in graphic arts and small business management. Most recently Alma worked as Executive Assistant  of  Las Paletas  Gourmet Popsicles.  Alma’s  duties include providing administrative support for CLAS faculty and staff, coordinating logistics of visiting speakers, and helping to strengthen the Center’s relationships both on and off campus.  Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Alma has been involved in cultural outreach for the Latin American community in Nashville.

Helena Simonett, Associate Director (email)

Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies and Adjunct at the Blair School of Music, Helena Simonett has taken on an appointment as Associate Director of CLAS. Helena will oversee our FLAS, Graduate Certificate, language evaluation, and summer grants programs. Originally from Switzerland, Helena received her PhD in Ethnomusicology from UCLA. Her research on Mexican popular music and its transnational diffusion resulted in the publication of a number of articles and two books, Banda: Mexican Musical Life across Borders and En Sinaloa nací: Historia de la música de banda. She is currently doing research on the musical life of an indigenous community in Sinaloa, northwestern Mexico.

Frank Robinson, Associate Director for Graduate and Undergraduate Studies (email)

Frank Robinson is a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean with interests in twentieth century political and social movements, nationalism and populism, and Caribbean Diaspora communities. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University, with a primary focus on the history of the Caribbean. At the graduate level at the University of Florida (M.A.) and at Auburn University (Ph.D.), he specialized in African Area Studies and Latin American history. Professor Robinson teaches courses in the Atlantic World and Latin American and Caribbean history that cover both the colonial and national periods including the history of the Iberian Atlantic empires, modern Latin America, Central America, and the contemporary Caribbean.

Paula Covington, Bibliographer (email)

Paula Covington is Latin American and Iberian Bibliographer at the Vanderbilt University Libraries and a Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies.  She has taught Latin American Research Methods for more than three decades, and is the author of an award-winning work, Latin America and the Caribbean: A Research Guide, a research project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Paula is past president of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), an international organization focused on the development of research services and library collections of Latin Americana. She has twice received the José Toribio Medina award for a distinguished monograph in Latin American Studies. Paula received her degrees from Syracuse University and Vanderbilt University in Latin American history and studied at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.  She is a participant in an NEH-funded project to preserve and digitize colonial Latin American slave society records (Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies). Her principal research interest is 19^th-century women travelers to Latin America.