What Research Areas and Recent Achievements Are Highlighted by CLACS Faculty?

CLACS faculty highlights showcase scholars from across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who study Latin America and the Caribbean, with recent recognition spanning political science, history, and literature. The center's news items pair each award with the faculty member's research focus, so the highlights double as a map of the center's disciplinary range. If you want to know what kinds of work CLACS-affiliated scholars do, the faculty news section is a reasonable starting point—but it reflects only the achievements the center has chosen to feature, not a complete faculty directory.

Research areas represented in the highlights

The featured scholars point to several distinct fields:

• Political science and legislative studies — Gisela Sin, Professor of Political Science and CLACS Director, works on comparative politics and legislative institutions. Her co-authored article on line-item vetoes as a coordination mechanism was recognized in 2025.
• Latin American and Brazilian history — Marc Hertzman, Professor of History, specializes in the history of Brazil and Latin America, with interests in race, the African diaspora, culture, slavery and its legacies, labor, and gender. His current work examines colonial-era Brazil, particularly the afterlives and inheritances of Palmares and its leader Zumbi.
• Literature and cultural studies — Ramón Soto-Crespo was named the James M. Benson Professor, adding a humanities appointment to the set of highlighted faculty.

This spread illustrates a point worth noting: CLACS is not a single department but a center that draws affiliated faculty from multiple disciplines. A faculty highlight can therefore come from political science, history, or literature without any change to how the center operates.

Recent recognitions, with context

Hertzman's book After Palmares: Diaspora, Inheritance, and the Afterlives of Zumbi (2024) also received the American Historical Association's 2025 James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History and the Brazilian Studies Association's 2026 Roberto Reis Book Award.

What the highlights tell you—and what they don't

The faculty news items are useful for three things:

1. Confirming disciplinary breadth. Seeing political scientists, historians, and literature scholars in the same feed shows the center's cross-campus reach.
2. Identifying current research themes. Brazil, race and diaspora, slavery's legacies, legislative institutions, and colonial history all appear in the featured work.
3. Tracking institutional recognition. External prizes and internal awards like University Scholar signal how the university and professional associations value this work.

They are less useful as a comprehensive picture. The page presents selected congratulations rather than a full faculty roster, so a scholar's absence from the highlights says nothing about their affiliation. For current faculty news, check the CLACS site directly rather than relying on any single snapshot of the page.

How to use this if you're exploring CLACS

• If you are a prospective student or researcher looking for an advisor, treat the highlighted names as examples of the center's range, then consult the full faculty listing for your specific field.
• If you are tracking a particular research area—say, Brazilian history or comparative legislative politics—the named scholars give you concrete entry points into that work.
• If you want ongoing updates, the center also offers a newsletter subscription, which is the more reliable channel for new faculty news than revisiting the homepage.