TDPS Faculty to Lead Latin American Studies Center

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Dr. Laurie Frederik, associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies and a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology, has been appointed director of the Latin American Studies Center. In addition to her current teaching positions, Frederik will oversee the undergraduate certificate program and activities that give Maryland students access to campus resources about Latin America.

“I hope that my position as Director will bring LASC and its community of students, faculty, and community members in greater collaboration with the performing arts, such as we have here in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, as well as in the School of Music,” Frederik wrote. “I hope to help to join those interested in the academic research of Latin American and Latina/o culture with those who put it on stage and artistically express similar concerns and concepts.”

Dr. Frederik has written extensively about modern Cuba, including a 2012 book Trumpets in the Mountains: Theater and the Politics of National Culture in Cuba, which was based on more than a decade of ethnographic research. She spent two and a half years living in Cuba’s most remote mountainous areas, known as “zones of silence.” Dr. Frederik teaches classes about the anthropology of art and performance, subversive cultural movements, national identity, censorship, creativity and ethnographic method.