Student Views help showcase the cultural and academic experiences of students who have spent time in Latin America or have engaged with Latin American communities in the U.S. Entries can take a variety of forms, from narrative stories of personal adventure to academic descriptions of research findings, and everything in between!
If you are interested in submitting an entry, email jerlick@fas.harvard.edu! Click below for more information.
Student Views Submissions
Welcome to Student Views! We invite Harvard and other students—undergraduate, graduate and recent alumni—to submit 1,500-word articles, published weekly.
We are looking for four types of articles:
—Write about your experience in a Latin American country or a Latinx neighborhood. DRCLAS internships preferred, but not necessary.
—Tell us about your academic research, your work on your thesis or a special project in language that people who are not in your field will understand. Anecdotes are encouraged. How did you get interested in the topic? What do you want to learn going forward?
—Write about personal issues of identity that reflect the diversity of the Latin American or Latinx experience.
—Reviews of plays, movies, art, music about Latin America or Latinx themes.
If you are interested in submitting an entry, email jerlick@fas.harvard.edu!
Recent Articles
The Opacity of Cuba’s La Habana Vieja
On a recent trip to Havana, two fellow visitors reminded me what it feels like to encounter the Cuban city for the first time and to become enamored with its paradoxes. The first, a young Kansan woman in my Airbnb, learning that I study Cuban architecture and urbanism, expressed a familiar curiosity about the dramatic contrast between austere 19th century mansions, colonial palaces and the surrounding blocks of ruinous buildings. The second, a Berliner, shared ceviche with me on a restaurant balcony overlooking a street bustling with tourists and art vendors. He pointed out with a laugh that our utensils came from Air France first class.
It’s Time For Women
“I believe we are in an exacerbated crisis of non-guarantee of women’s rights throughout the country, with the peculiar characteristic of finding ourselves in a moment of different rhetoric — of it being the time of women — because we now have the first woman president, seventy years after women gained the right to vote in this country,” said my interviewee, an organizer for a women’s rights organization in Oaxaca.
Amazonian Research Trip
Around the halfway point of my doctoral studies, I spent a year living between Boston and Belém in the Amazon region of Brazil to experience firsthand what I had until then been researching from satellite images and other people’s accounts. Belém became my base, from which I made frequent short excursions to surrounding areas to get a feel for life in the region. After that initial experience, I planned deeper immersions that recently brought me back for two longer field trips. This is a brief narrative of one of them.
What Your Naked Bodies Told Me
Twelve actors were seated on a game board, staring intently at us. I entered and took a seat in a chair in the corner. Spectators were scattered across the board, clustered in small groups of five or six around each actor. In front of me on the floor sat actor Daniel Tonsig, who looked deep into our eyes for long, silent seconds.
Bridging Worlds: Learning, Culture and Connection in Chile
My first morning in Santiago, Chile, the city greeted me with a kaleidoscope of life. The Andes rose sharply in the distance, their peaks dusted with snow in the early Chilean winter. Street vendors sold fresh empanadas and pastel de choclo, their aromas blending with the crisp mountain air. That morning, I also met my host family, who would become my home away from home for the summer (Boston’s summer is Chile’s winter).
Contacto y probando
The young girls led me through tall wet grass along a muddy footpath to a clearing behind their house. I had recently asked to film them as part of a year-long Sensory Ethnography production course at Harvard, and I had not expected such swift acceptance into their group. The
Student Views Archive
In this repository you can find all of the student views categorized by country. You can find student views which do not focus on a country in the “General Considerations”.
Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Panama
Peru
Venezuela
