clacs.illinois.edu

You can support or connect with the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) through three paths listed on its site: donating, subscribing to the CLACS newsletter, and using its community resources. All three are handled through links on clacs.illinois.edu, so the site itself is the starting point for any of them. This is an informational overview of what each option is for — the site does not publish donation amounts, membership terms, or subscription details, so treat those as things to confirm on the linked pages.

What CLACS Is

CLACS serves students, faculty, and scholars across the University of Illinois campus, along with communities across Illinois and the Midwest. Its stated purpose is promoting innovative research, specialist teaching, and public awareness of the Latin American and Caribbean region.

It is a designated National Resource Center for the 2022–2026 period, supported by the Department of Education under Title VI funding. That designation matters if you are deciding how to engage: it signals a federally recognized center with a defined academic mission, not a standalone club or donation drive.

Ways to Connect or Support

The homepage groups its calls to action as Connect with CLACS, Subscribe, Community Resources, and Donate. Here is what each is for.

Subscribe to the CLACS Newsletter

The newsletter link points to a University of Illinois web services subscription page. Use it if your goal is staying current on CLACS news, events, and faculty announcements without checking the site manually.

• Input: your email address on the subscription form.
• Action: submit the form at the linked University of Illinois subscription page.
• Expected result: you are added to the CLACS newsletter list. The site does not state frequency, so treat the cadence as unconfirmed until you receive issues.

Use Community Resources

The Community Resources section is the engagement path for people outside the campus research community — including communities across Illinois and the Midwest that CLACS says it serves. Use it if you want to participate in or draw on CLACS programming rather than give money or read email updates. The site does not itemize what each resource contains, so browse the section directly to see what applies to you.

Donate

The Donate option is the direct financial support path. The site does not publish giving levels, accepted payment methods, or whether gifts are restricted to specific programs, so check the donation page for those terms before committing.

Which Option Fits Your Goal

A Note on What the Site Does Not Say

The homepage lists these options but does not describe their terms. Nothing on the page indicates that subscribing or using community resources requires payment, and nothing indicates that donating has a minimum. Because those details are not published, verify them on the individual linked pages rather than assuming.

Faculty Achievements as a Signal of Where Support Goes

If you are weighing whether to give, the faculty highlights on the homepage show the kind of work CLACS-affiliated scholars do:

• Gisela Sin, Professor of Political Science, CLACS Director, and current Acting Director of the Illinois Global Institute, received the Jewell-Loewenberg Prize from the American Political Science Association's Legislative Studies Section for "Line-item Vetoes as a Coordination Mechanism," named Best Article in Comparative Politics in Legislative Studies Quarterly (2025).
• Marc Hertzman, Professor of History, was named a 2026–2027 University Scholar, a program that grants each recipient $15,000 per year for three years. He specializes in the history of Brazil and Latin America, and his 2024 book After Palmares won the American Historical Association's 2025 James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History and the Brazilian Studies Association's 2026 Roberto Reis Book Award.
• Ramón Soto-Crespo was named the James M. Benson Professor.

These are recognition and research outcomes, not descriptions of how donations are used. If you want to know whether gifts support faculty research, student funding, or public programming, that is a question for the donation page or CLACS staff.

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at the University of Illinois serves students, faculty, and scholars from across the University of Illinois campus, as well as communities across Illinois and the Midwest. Its stated purpose is to promote innovative research, specialist teaching, and public awareness of the Latin American and Caribbean region. If you are looking for an academic center that connects university expertise with broader public engagement on the region, CLACS is designed to serve exactly that mix of audiences.

Who CLACS Serves

According to the center's own description, CLACS directs its work toward four overlapping groups:

• Students at the University of Illinois, who can engage with the center's teaching and programming.
• Faculty and scholars from across the campus, who participate in research and specialist teaching.
• Communities across Illinois, who benefit from public-facing programming and awareness efforts.
• Communities across the Midwest, extending the center's reach beyond the immediate campus area.

This is not a single-audience unit. It is structured as a regional resource that bridges campus scholarship and public knowledge.

What Kinds of Engagement CLACS Offers

The center describes three main areas of activity:

CLACS holds a National Resource Center designation for the 2022–2026 period, supported by the U.S. Department of Education under Title VI funding. That designation signals that the center meets federal criteria as a national resource for language and area studies, which typically corresponds to a broad mandate for outreach, teaching, and research support.

Where to Start on the Site

The homepage points to several entry points depending on what you need:

• Community Resources — for community members and regional partners looking for materials or connections.
• Subscribe to CLACS Newsletter — a mailing list signup for updates on events, news, and programming.
• Donate — for those who want to support the center financially.
• Faculty Highlights — a running section that profiles recent achievements of affiliated faculty.

The faculty highlights give a concrete sense of the center's academic range. Recent items include:

• Professor Gisela Sin (Political Science, CLACS Director) receiving the Jewell-Loewenberg Prize from the American Political Science Association's Legislative Studies Section for the article "Line-item Vetoes as a Coordination Mechanism," recognized as the Best Article in Comparative Politics published in Legislative Studies Quarterly in 2025.
• Professor Marc Hertzman (History) named a 2026–2027 University Scholar, with research on Brazil and Latin America focusing on race, the African diaspora, culture, slavery and its legacies, labor, and gender. His 2024 book After Palmares won the American Historical Association's 2025 James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History and the Brazilian Studies Association's 2026 Roberto Reis Book Award.
• Professor Ramón Soto-Crespo receiving the James M. Benson Professorship.

These profiles are useful if you want to understand what kind of scholarship the center supports and who is affiliated with it.

What to Check Before You Act

The homepage provides an overview and starting points, but specific program details — course listings, event schedules, funding opportunities, community resource contents, and eligibility for any particular offering — should be checked directly on the site. The newsletter subscription link is available if you want ongoing updates, and the Community Resources section is the natural first stop for public-facing materials.

If your question is whether CLACS is relevant to you: it is if you are a student, faculty member, scholar, or community member in Illinois or the Midwest with an interest in Latin American and Caribbean studies. The center's mandate explicitly includes all of those groups.

CLACS is the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It serves students, faculty, and scholars across the campus, as well as communities across Illinois and the Midwest, by promoting innovative research, specialist teaching, and public awareness of the Latin American and Caribbean region. It is a designated National Resource Center for the 2022–2026 period, supported by the U.S. Department of Education under Title VI funding.

What CLACS does

The center's stated mission covers three connected areas:

• Research — supporting innovative scholarship on Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Teaching — offering specialist instruction and resources for students and faculty.
• Public awareness — engaging audiences beyond campus, including communities across Illinois and the Midwest.

Because it holds National Resource Center status under Title VI, CLACS is part of a federally supported network of area studies centers, which typically carry obligations around outreach, language and area training, and public programming.

Who it serves

Faculty and scholarship highlights

The center's homepage spotlights current faculty achievements, which give a sense of the research areas it covers:

• Gisela Sin, Professor of Political Science, CLACS Director, and current Acting Director of the Illinois Global Institute, received the Jewell-Loewenberg Prize from the American Political Science Association's Legislative Studies Section for "Line-item Vetoes as a Coordination Mechanism," named Best Article in Comparative Politics in Legislative Studies Quarterly (2025).
• Marc Hertzman, Professor of History, was named a 2026–2027 University Scholar. His work focuses on Brazil and Latin America, including race, the African diaspora, culture, slavery and its legacies, labor, and gender. His 2024 book After Palmares won the American Historical Association's 2025 James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History and the Brazilian Studies Association's 2026 Roberto Reis Book Award.
• Ramón Soto-Crespo was named the James M. Benson Professor.

Getting involved

The site offers several entry points: subscribing to the CLACS newsletter, connecting with the center, and options to donate or access community resources. If you are a student or faculty member looking for regional expertise, a community organization seeking programming, or a researcher tracking Latin American and Caribbean scholarship, the newsletter and the "Connect with CLACS" links are the most direct starting points.

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.

You can subscribe to the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) newsletter through the "Subscribe to CLACS Newsletter" link on the CLACS website, which points to a University of Illinois subscription form at groups.webservices.illinois.edu. Subscribing is the direct way to receive CLACS updates and announcements; the site lists no price for it, so treat any cost or access terms as unconfirmed unless the subscription form states them.

Subscribe to the newsletter

1. Go to the CLACS website (clacs.illinois.edu).
2. Find the "Subscribe to CLACS Newsletter" link, listed alongside "Connect with CLACS."
3. Open the subscription form at groups.webservices.illinois.edu/subscribe/84527.
4. Enter your details in the form and submit it.

Expected result: you are added to the CLACS newsletter list and receive updates and announcements by email. If the form asks for information you don't want to provide, or if you don't receive a confirmation, that's the main point to check before assuming the subscription went through.

What kind of updates you'll get

CLACS news centers on faculty research and recognition. Recent examples from the site:

The newsletter is the channel through which this type of award and appointment news is shared.

Other ways to stay connected

Beyond the newsletter, the CLACS site groups its engagement options under "Connect with CLACS," which also lists Community Resources and Donate. If you want to follow CLACS activities without committing to email, those sections are the other entry points the site offers.

What CLACS is, in short

CLACS serves students, faculty, and scholars across the University of Illinois campus, plus communities across Illinois and the Midwest, by promoting research, specialist teaching, and public awareness of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a designated National Resource Center for 2022–2026, supported by the Department of Education under Title VI funding. That designation is why its public-facing news and resources are aimed at both campus and regional audiences.