University of Connecticut, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies Institute Records

The Institute of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at the University of Connecticut opened in the Fall of 1994, and serves as an interdisciplinary research and teaching program with a comparative focus on the Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Latin American populations in Connecticut, the Northeast, Puerto Rico, and other regions of the continental United States.

The Institute's specific goals were to promote, sponsor, and promulgate the results of comparative, interdisciplinary research on Puerto Rican and other Latino peoples in the United States which place an emphasis on Connecticut and the northeastern region. Additionally, the Institute worked to develop and coordinate an interdisciplinary academic program which offers an undergraduate minor in Latino Studies and graduate coursework in the field of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies.

On July 1, 2012 the University of Connecticut inaugurated El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean and Latin American Studies, a new research institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The institute is a merger and revision of all the constituent elements of the former Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (est. 1974) and the former Institute of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies (est. 1994). Offering BA and MA degrees grounded in both traditional disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies, El Instituto is at the forefront of new ways of thinking about hemispheric Latina/o disaporas, U.S. Latina/os, Latin American and Caribbean societies and U.S./Latin American relations related to coloniality, race, migration, education, media, economics, health, cultural studies and human rights. El Instituto provides a central place for research, scholarship, and academic programs uniting over 60 scholars at the University of Connecticut. It also offers linkages to local, regional, national and hemispheric academic communities and areas of investigation with a historical research focus on the life of Latino and Puerto Rican communities in New England.

El Instituto plays prominent roles in national organizations such as the Puerto Rican Studies Association (PRSA), Latina and Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit), South-North Exchange on Theory, Culture, and Law, and the Consortium for Latin American Studies Programs, and its faculty are active in research consortia throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.