Cultural Analysis in Latin America studies Latin American culture through literature and media in the broadest sense, with  a strong focus on the relationship between cultural production and social contexts. You will explore the ways modern  social dynamics in the region impact on, and are in turn impacted by, Latin American cultural production and identity representations. Also significant is the study of how cultural narratives (whether in literature or film, for example) play a role in allowing different voices and sections of society to articulate their experiences (even when traditionally silenced or marginalized). In this track, we study works drawn from a broad range of fields: from literature, to theatre, film and popular culture (soap operas graphic novels, song lyrics). Staff expertise cover disciplinary fields within literary studies, film and media studies, cultural studies, visual and performing arts, new media.

Examples of research you can  conduct   include specific cultural expressions one can find in the Latin American cities, from graffiti to blogs, from mass cultural events to neighborhood actions to keep their local identity. During fielwork, aside from interviews, for example, archival research can be done into film archives or cultural journals, to name a few, looking at the ways in which specific current issues are treated in film and television production.

If you choose for Public Policies in Latin America (modern Latin American history), you will have the chance to study the fast changing nature of current state-civil society relations in this region. Special attention is paid to such issues as the formulation and application of public policies dealing with problems in fields such as education, citizens’ security, poverty alleviation, indigenous groups, gender issues, health, and environment, and the ways civil society interacts with these initiatives. Staff expertise cover disciplinary fields within modern history, political economy, politics, international relations, anthropology, sociology.

You can conduct for instance fieldwork research on specific programmes implemented by state agencies as well as by local governments, NGOs, and citizens’ initiatives in several Latin American countries. By conducting interviews with citizens, policy-makers, and experts on the specific topic of study, you will obtain a unique experience in Latin America.

Within the Language Variation and Bilingualism track you will study a series of current issues related bilingualism and language variation in the Spanish and Portuguese language as spoken in Latin America. Our faculty members do research on topics such as second language acquisition, grammatical aspects of bilingualism and language contact and syntactic variation. Moreover, faculty members and students bring a strong interdisciplinary focus to scholarship and teaching and actively collaborate with other Leiden University programs, such as the Leiden University Center for Linguistics (LUCL) and the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC). Staff expertise cover disciplinary fields within sociolinguistics, bilingualism, second-language acquisition, morphosyntax, heritage languages, minority and indigenous languages, language policy, language contact.

During the master main theoretical and methodological issues will be discussed based on examples drawn from studies of bilingualism and language variation in Spanish and Portuguese. Several topics will be presented, from first to second language acquisition, individual to social bilingualism and finally language instruction and language policies concerning bilingualism.

You can conduct research on for instance second language acquisition, language variation, heritage Spanish and Portuguese in the Netherlands.

Public Policies

• National Identity and Nation Branding in Chile
• The project of the Nicaraguan Canal: Nationalism versus economic development

Cultural Analysis

• The representation of domestic servants in Brazilian cinema
• The conceptualization of the border in contemporary Mexican literature

Language Variation and Bilingualism

• The phenomenon of Code-switching among Polish Immigrants in Argentina
• The acquisition of Grammatical Gender in Dutch: a comparison between Dutch Monolingual Children and Spanish-Dutch Bilingual children

Topics within the courses are connected to the evolving social, linguistic and cultural issues shaping Latin America. Each year, we organize a rich programme of invited academic speakers, including guest lecture series by scholars from Brazil, and a dedicated course taught by a prominent scholar from Chile. . Speakers from other Dutch and foreign universities, NGOs, embassies and International Relations also regularly speak at guest lectures. 

The aim of the MA in Latin American Studies is to ensure you graduate with state-of-the-art knowledge about key academic issues that are currently under discussion in and on Latin America in the fields of modern history, cultural analysis or linguistics. In addition, you will have learned how to carry out independent research in a Latin American country, and how to develop this research into an academic piece of work in the form of a written dissertation.