Presenter/Facilitator Bios

Contributors and Presenters

Author Jorge Argueta  

Jorge Tetl Argueta is a celebrated Salvadoran poet and writer whose bi-lingual children’s books have received numerous awards. His poetry has appeared in anthologies and textbooks. He won the America’s Book Award, among other awards for his first collection of poems for children,  Links to an external site.A Movie in My Pillow Links to an external site.. He was the Gold Medal Award winner in the 2005 National Parenting Publications Awards (NAPPA) for Moony Luna/Luna, Lunita Lunera Links to an external site.. His other works for children include Xochitl and the Flowers Links to an external site., 2003 America’s Award Commended Title, Trees are Hanging from the Sky Links to an external site., Zipitio Links to an external site., Talking with Mother Earth Links to an external site., The Little Hen in the City  Links to an external site.and The Fiesta of the Tortillas Links to an external site..

 Brian Crouch

Brian Crouch is a Spanish language and history instructor entering his 8th year of teaching. As an educator, Brian passionately shares with students the importance of Latin America that stems from his time living in Guatemala. During his tenure with the Palm Beach County School District (10th largest in the nation), Brian developed the largest Latin American History program in the county. He also worked as a liaison to the school district to expand curriculum associated with Latin American studies. This work combined with student international trips led him to win the Hispanic Heritage Excellence in Education award from the Governor of Florida. This coming fall, Brian will embark with Valwood School in Hahira, GA to cultivate the Spanish language program in order to enhance students' awareness of the language and the unique culture and history of Latin America and Spain.

Paul D. Duncan, University of Georgia  

Paul Duncan has a BA in physical geography/geology from the University of Iowa and MSc in forestry/agroforestry from the University of Florida. From 2002 to present, Mr. Duncan has served as associate director of the UGA Latin American & Caribbean Studies Institute (LACSI). He currently also serves as outreach coordinator of the Institute's U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center grant and manages UGA's Latin American Ethnobotanical Garden. He organizes and facilitates teacher workshops to strengthen Latin American Studies curriculum for middle and high schools and to create school gardens/outdoor learning environments. Each spring Mr. Duncan teaches Latinos in the Green Industry, a UGA Department of Horticulture service-learning course. Finally, in 2016 Mr. Duncan worked in coordination with UGA’s Office of Global Engagement to create and help coordinate the UGA Peace Corps Prep Certificate program. 

Email: pduncan@uga.edu

  Dr. Sarah Fouts, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)

Sarah Fouts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies and Public Humanities at UMBC. She received her PhD in Latin American Studies at Tulane University and an MS in Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans. Fouts’ research interests include transnationalism, Honduras, New Orleans, ethnography, political economy, and food studies. She is working on a book on food, land, and labor in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Email: sfouts@umbc.edu

  Dr. Adrienne Gonzales, Tulane University

Adrienne received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics with a focus on Second Language Acquisition and Computer-Assisted Language Learning from the University of New Mexico.  For over 15 years, she has worked in language education as an instructor, pedagogy specialist, and administrator.  She has taught language and the high school and college level and is currently the Director of the Language Learning Center at Tulane University.  Adrienne is also a certified College Reading and Learning Association Master Tutor and is a Qualified Administrator for the Intercultural Development Inventory. 

Email: agonzales1@tulane.edu

Dr. Brooke Grant, Tulane University

Brooke Grant is a Professor of Practice in the Teacher Preparation & Certification Program at Tulane University where she prepares new teachers for the PK-12 classroom.  In addition to teaching, she works to support teachers in the New Orleans area by running S.S. NOLA and serving as Program Director for AfterCLASS, both of which were designed with local teachers in mind. 

Dr. Grant also works to support first-year Tulane students in their transition from high school to college as a First-Year Faculty Fellow, First-Year seminar instructor, and First-Year Residential Faculty Mentor.  Additionally, she is proud to be a College Track mentor and a member of the First Generation Faculty & Staff Council. 

Prior to working in higher education, Dr. Grant enjoyed a ten-year career as a certified middle school social studies teacher outside of Buffalo, New York.  She has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and International Relations from Canisius College, as well a Masters and PhD Degree in Education from the University at Buffalo. 

Email: bgrant1@tulane.edu

  Dr. Christine Hernández, Tulane University

Christine Hernández serves as Curator of Special Collections and coordinates digitization initiatives at the Latin American Library since 2012. She received her A.B. in Spanish and Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where she was Phi Beta Kappa, and earned her M.A. and her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Tulane University in 2000. She specializes in Mesoamerican archaeology with some practical experience in the Greater Southwest of the US and SE Louisiana. She has published widely on the archaeology of Mesoamerica, specializing in the prehistory of Michoacán and the El Bajío region of north-central Mexico, and prehispanic painted Maya and highland central Mexican codices.  Her published works include journal articles and chapters in edited volumes by publishers like Dumbarton Oaks, University of Florida Press, Ancient Mesoamerica, Ancient America, Middle American Research Institute, and BAR.  She has co-authored several volumes with Dr. Gabriel Vail the most recent of which is, Re-Creating Primordial Time:  Foundation Rituals and Mythology in the Postclassic Maya Codices (2013), published by University Press of Colorado.

Email: chernand@tulane.edu

MA Candidate Marina Hernandez, MPH, Tulane University

Marina Hernandez is a graduate student in the Master of Arts in Latin American Studies program at Tulane. She holds a Master of Public Health and is a Certified Health Education Specialist®. She joins the MA program in pursuit of contextual application of her public health education and skills to populations throughout Latin America. Throughout her coursework, Marina has engaged with several short-term study programs with the University of Central Oklahoma, Global Brigades, and Child Family Health International. She is currently in the process of developing her thesis that explores the role of mobile libraries in Colombia's peace process. By combining her background in public health with her studies in the M.A. program, she hopes to foster more meaningful and mutually beneficial partnerships between U.S. and Latin American institutions. To rest and recharge, Marina enjoys cuddling with her cats, enjoying coffee with her partner, and breathing in fresh air!

Email: mhernandez1@tulane.edu

  Dr. Amalia Leguizamón, Tulane University

Amalia Leguizamón is an Associate Professor of Sociology and core faculty at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. She teaches courses on environmental sociology, sustainable development, and the sociology of food and agriculture. Her research examines the political economy of the environment in Latin America, particularly Argentina’s swift agrarian transformation based on the early adoption and intensive implementation of genetically modified soybeans. Her work has been published in The Journal of Peasant Studies, Latin American Perspectives, and Geoforum, among other outlets. Dr. Leguizamón is the author of Seeds of Power: Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina (Duke University Press, 2020).

Email: aleguiza@tulane.edu

PhD Candidate MiguelAngel Lopez, Tulane University

MiguelAngel Lopez was born in Dallas, Texas to two loving immigrant parents from Guanajuato, Mexico. He is a registered dietitian nutritionist with a Master of Public Health in epidemiology and is currently pursuing a PhD in Social, Behavior, and Population Sciences. He has worked abroad in Spain, China, and Peru in various community nutrition-centered branches, but is currently focusing his work on helping immigrants from Latin American who are residing in the United States. Currently, his work focuses on identifying and detailing Whiteness in nutrition guidelines and recommendations. 

Email: mlopez10@tulane.edu

 Sarah Scism, MA, Tulane University

Sarah Stanton Scism was born in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, in June of 1997. After graduating from Kings Mountain High School, she attended North Greenville University in Tigerville, South Carolina, and graduated in May of 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in History. During her time at Tulane, Sarah primarily researched migration and xenophobia in Central America, focusing on how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted trends in xenophobic rhetoric in Costa Rica. She graduated from Tulane with an MA in Latin American Studies in May of 2021. 

Email: sscism625@gmail.com

  Dr. Rachel Stein, Tulane University

Rachel Stein has been the Research & Instruction Librarian at The Latin American Library at Tulane University since 2018. She holds a Ph.D. in Latin American and Iberian Cultures from Columbia University and M.A. in Spanish from Middlebury College. Her doctoral research examined the printing of books on America, Africa, and Asia in seventeenth-century Lisbon, tracing global production networks across coordinates as diverse as Mexico City, Isla Margarita, Buenos Aires, Bahia, Antwerp, Portuguese Morocco, and Goa. She has published book reviews in The Papers of the Bibliographic Society of America and The Journal of Early Modern History and has a forthcoming article on integrating second language and special collections pedagogy. Before becoming a librarian, Rachel taught Spanish language in secondary and higher education settings for seven years. She also teaches courses on medieval Spain and Don Quixote to the general public as affiliate faculty of The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. 

Email: rstein7@tulane.edu

  Dr. Justin Wolfe, Tulane University

Justin Wolfe is a professor of Latin American history at Tulane University and has worked in Latin America for thirty years. He has lived and worked in Mexico, Central America and Brazil, but his research focuses primarily on Nicaragua. His work explores social and cultural history over the long nineteenth-century, particularly the construction of identity within the context of everyday politics. At the same time, he seeks to cross back and forth over the boundaries between social scientific and cultural analysis, to explore the interconnections between structure and imagining. Wolfe is also interested in the relationship between history and documentary filmmaking as parallel practices and questions of narrative form, visual and aural evidence, expertise and authority, and the ethics of representation

Email: jwolfe@tulane.edu

Michael Wyatt, ThriveWorx

Michael graduated from UGA in 2018 with a BA in International Affairs. Before applying to the Peace Corps, he briefly worked in Washington D.C.; he was later accepted into the Rural Extension project in Guatemala. During my time in Peace Corps Guatemala, he lived in Huehuetenango and Totonicapán, helping to organize rural communities and connect them to institutional aid (Guatemalan Government, NGOs, etc.). After being evacuated in 2020, he worked at the Michigan State House of Representatives before beginning a fellowship with ThriveWorx. He has been a part of ThriveWorx for a year, working on various projects ranging from MRE development to Carbon Offset production. He currently works in Guatemala to help strengthen ThriveWorx's relationships with coffee-producing communities in western Huehuetenango. He plans to attend either the University of Edinburgh or KU Leuven this fall as a master’s candidate focusing on international economic development in post conflict settings.

Email: michaelwyatt@thriveworx.org

  Colleen McCoy, Vanderbilt University

Colleen McCoy is the Outreach Coordinator of the Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University.  She leads public engagement programs, organizes K-16 teacher workshop series and summer institutes, strengthens collaborations with Minority Serving Institutions and regional postsecondary institutions, builds partnerships and programming with local cultural arts organizations, and works with educators to develop curricular resources. She also co-coordinates the Américas Award Links to an external site. for Children’s & Young Adult Literature, sponsored by the national Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs. Colleen is the Chair of the Academy of IB Diploma Programme Partners Board at Hillsboro High School and serves on the Advisory Board for Cheekwood Estate & Garden’s el Dia de los Muertos celebration. Colleen received her M.Ed in International Education Policy and Management from Vanderbilt University, a B.A. in International Studies and Spanish, and a B.A. in Public Relations from the University of Kentucky.

Derek Bentley, University of Georgia

Currently the Associate Director of Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) at The University of Georgia’s (UGA) Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute (LACSI), Derek Bentley received his Ph.D. in Latin American History from UGA in 2017. A specialist in Mexican History, Dr. Bentley coordinates LACSI’s NRC-supported research, educational, and outreach initiatives as well as its Foreign Language and Area Studies student fellowship program. He is also a founding member of the Greater Atlanta Coalition for Global Education and Research, which promotes collaboration and resource sharing among K-16 institutions and stakeholders in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.   

Email: dbent@uga.edu