Inter-American Studies at the FAU

The interdisciplinary inter-American studies program is of central importance to us and has developed into a highly regarded field of research on a national as well as on an international level in recent years. Inter-American Studieshas long been a distinctive focus of teaching and research in Erlangen, both in North American Studies and in Latin American Studies.

North American Studies has a special tradition in Erlangen, as it has always defined its object of research beyond narrow national boundaries. This has led to the development of a research and teaching profile that is unique (not only in Bavaria) in that it positions and analyzes the U.S. in an inter-American and transatlantic network of relations and, in addition to the U.S. and Canada, includes the Anglophone Caribbean as important independent areas of teaching and research. The first director of the Bavarian Academy of America was a professor of American Studies in Erlangen,and the department still represents this organization of Bavarian researchers in the field of North American Studies.

The foundations of Latin American Studies in Erlangen were laid with the establishment of the Latin America Divisionat the Central Institute for Regional Research in the 1970s. With the series „Arbeitsunterlagen zur Lateinamerikaforschung” (1966-1974), “Beiträge zur Soziologie und Sozialkunde Lateinamerikas” (1967-1984), and “Lateinamerika-Studien/Estudios Latinoamericanos” (since 1977), now with well over 50 volumes, the division has made a decisive contribution to Latin American studies in Germany. The founding of the Bavarian Academic Center for Latin America (BAYLAT) takes into account the fact that FAU has the most contacts with Latin American universities and research institutions in Bavaria.