Administration
Jorge Coronado
Director, Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Jorge Coronado is Professor in th Department of Spanish & Portuguese focusing on modern Latin American and Andean literatures and cultures. His undergraduate courses range across the 19th and 20th centuries and draw from various disciplines and cultural practices, such as history, archaeology, anthropology, music, photography, and literature. His graduate courses focus on two areas: literary and cultural theory and Andean studies. He has taught in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese as well as in Comparative Literary Studies Program and the Program of Latin American & Caribbean Studies, where he is a core faculty member. Beyond these, his affiliations at Northwestern include the Andean Cultures & Histories working group, the Center for Native American & Indigenous Research, the Program in Critical Theory, and the German Department. You can reach Jorge at: jcoronado@northwestern.edu
Mark Hauser
Director of Graduate Studies, Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program
Mark Hauser is Professor in the Department of Anthropology. He is an historical archaeologist who specializes in materiality, slavery and inequality. These key themes intersect in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Atlantic and Indian Oceans and form a foundation on his research on the African Diaspora and Colonial Contexts. His research uses slavery’s archaeological record to map alternative geographies of the 18th and 19th-century world. His first book An Archaeology of Black Markets (Florida 2008), maps the informal economies of enslaved people in Jamaica through the utilitarian pottery they made and with which they furnished their houses to trace the cultural and political registers of their everyday lives. His most recent book, Mapping water in Dominica (Washington 2021) examines the archaeological record of water, its management, and everyday uses during the island’s short lived ‘sugar revolution,’ to map the ecological legacies of colonialism and slavery in the Caribbean. His current research on the labor histories and social lives of two communities in the Caribbean and South India, explores a ‘prehistory’ of the global south by mapping the movement of people, objects, and ideas between two oceans. You can reach Mark at: mark-hauser@northwestern.edu
Paul Gillingham
Director of Graduate Studies, Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Paul Gillingham is Professor of History. He specializes in politics, culture and violence in modern Mexico, and has published numerous articles and book chapters on these subjects. His most recent book is Unrevolutionary Mexico: The Birth of a Strange Dictatorship (2021). His first book, Cuauhtémoc’s Bones: Forging National Identity in Modern Mexico (2011), was awarded the Conference on Latin American History’s Mexican history prize. Gillingham is the co-editor of Dictablanda: Politics, Work, and Culture in Mexico, 1938-1968 (2014), Journalism, Satire, and Censorship in Mexico (2018), and the Violence in Latin American History series at the University of California Press. He has translated Oscar Altamirano’s monograph on Edgar Allen Poe, Poe: The Trauma of an Era (2017) and is currently writing a history of Mexico since 1511. He directs the Mexican Intelligence Digital Archives project (MIDAS), an open access collection of documents from Mexico’s security agencies at crl.edu/midas. You can reach Paul at: paul.gillingham@northwestern.edu
STAFF
The Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program is supported by the staff of the Weinberg College Center for International and Area Studies (WCCIAS)
Bianca R. Jimenez
Associate Director, WCCIAS
Bianca has been at the University since 2006 working with various area studies programs including Asian Studies, International Studies, Latin American & Caribbean Studies, and Middle East & North African Studies. She received her M.A. in Social Sciences with a concentration in Anthropology, from the University of Chicago. As Associate Director she oversees the administration of the center's programs and works with the faculty Directors to advise students, manage curricular development, and provide program management. Prior to joining Northwestern she worked for the Environmental and Conservation Program at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago where she worked closely with a local NGO in Peru, CIMA-Cordillera Azul to protect cultural diversity and land security, and to integrate improved quality of life into the management of Cordillera Azul National Park. While at the Museum, she also worked with the interactive program expeditions@fieldmuseum™, which followed Field Museum scientists as they conduct groundbreaking scientific research around the world and communicate it to a wider audience through dispatches, interactives and photos.
Contact Bianca for general undergrad advising, declaration of minor, petitions to graduate, study abroad consultation, course planning, Undergraduate prizes, Graduate summer grants.
Margaret Sagan
Program Coordinator, WCCIAS
Margaret Sagan is Program Coordinator of the Weinberg College Center for International and Area Studies, handling the center’s events. She joined the center in 2022. She co-authored the report “Responsible Coffee Sourcing: Towards a Living Income for Producers” in 2021, for the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI). She received her Master of International Affairs degree at Columbia University SIPA, performing field work in Malawi for the Business and Human Rights Clinic. She worked for a decade at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, where she managed visitor services, planned events including Jazz Showcase concerts and film screenings, and wrote the Close-Ups section of the Native Networks website.
Contact Margaret for information about event programming, communications, and honoraria.
Tiffany Williams-Cobleigh
Undergraduate and Graduate Coordinator, WCCIAS
Tiffany is a Program Assistant for the Center for International and Area Studies. She supports the International Studies Program, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and Middle East and North African Studies Program. She has been at Northwestern since 2016 and was with the Program of African Studies before joining WCCIAS. She earned her M.A. in Sociology with a concentration in rural community and economic development from Western Illinois University through their graduate program for returned Peace Corps volunteers and worked with the University of Missouri Extension before coming to Northwestern. She did her Peace Corps service in Rwanda and continues to travel internationally each year.
Contact Tiffany for questions regarding CAESAR, course information, registration inquiries, permission numbers, graduate summer grants, special payments, student group co-sponsorships, undergraduate prizes.
Cindy Pingry
Coordinator for Faculty Research Groups & Programming, WCCIAS
Cindy provides administrative support to the faculty research groups in the Center for International and Area Studies. She has worked in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern for over 8 years and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, having worked both in the Weinberg Dean’s office and in the Department of Economics. She’s played a key role in Weinberg College’s Convocation and has planned and managed a number of special events, lectures, colloquia, and conferences on campus. She’s had the opportunity to work with a wide range of faculty members and staff across Weinberg College. She likes learning about different cultures and travelling to experience all things first-hand. She enjoys the outdoors and likes to bike, hike, and sail. In the winter she likes to cross country ski. She also considers herself a “foodie”. Stop by the office and tell her an Aggie joke as she is a graduate of Texas A&M.
Contact Cindy for zoom meeting information, event planning, honorariums, flyers and publicity, inquires related to faculty research groups.
Joel Laureano
Faculty Research Groups & Programming, WCCIAS
Joel provides administrative support to the faculty research groups in the Center for International and Area Studies.