UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), along with UW-Madison’s Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies (LACIS) and Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS), and Florida International University’s Kimberly Green Latin America and Caribbean Center (LACC) are pleased to present our 2026 Summer Teacher Institute: Contemporary Religious Life in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Date, Location, Audience
- July 6-8, 2026
- Location: UW-Milwaukee (in person)
- Open to all educators at the K-12 and college levels! (Including librarians, counselors, and other staff)
Program Content
In this program, participants will learn about a wide variety of cultural practices, social movements, belief systems, and artistic expressions from across Latin America and the Caribbean, primarily focused on the 21st century. We will hear from university faculty, journalists, and museum staff about how religious worldviews and institutions have shaped contemporary social life and culture in the region. Discussions will include time to collaboratively discuss how to incorporate this material into your existing curriculum.
Session topics include:
- Violence and religion in Central America
- Revitalization of Indigenous languages & healing practices in the Peruvian Amazon
- Afro-Caribbean spiritual engagement with Black liberation movements in Trinidad
- The decline of Catholicism across the region and rise of folk saints like Santa Muerte in Mexico
- The U.S.-based sanctuary movement, faith, and migration
- Depictions of spiritual life in Milwaukee’s own Haitian art collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum
- And more!
Registration and Payment
- $90 educators (in-service teacher, librarian, counselor, other staff in K-16 setting)
- $30 education students
Fee includes breakfasts, lunches, and materials.
Registration deadline (institute and optional lodging): May 29, 2026. If you are interested in late registration, please email Monica VanBladel directly at vanblade@uwm.edu.
Lodging
Participants are expected to secure their own lodging. On-campus UWM lodging registration closed on May 29, 2026.
Some lower-cost, apartment-style suites are available through UWM University Housing (shared apartment with two private bedrooms): $57/night shared or $114/night single.Suites are available for the nights of July 5, 6, 7, and 8. Rates include overnight parking for one vehicle for the duration of your stay.
Payment in full is required in advance through your registration form (yellow button above). Reimbursement is available if requested by May 21 (45 days prior to reservation start). Thank you for your understanding!
Speaker Bios
We are delighted to be hosting these experts for our 2026 summer institute on Contemporary Religious Life in Latin America and the Caribbean:
- Dr. Robert Brenneman is Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology at Goshen College, and his research focuses on the impact of violence and violent social structures on human flourishing. His book Homies and Hermanos: God and Gangs in Central America (Oxford University Press 2011) takes a close-up look at the lives of sixty-three former gang members, many of whom joined an evangelical congregation as part of their attempt to extricate themselves from gang violence. Rob has provided expert witness testimony in more than a dozen asylum cases involving Central American gangs, and is widely published on matters of gangs and violence in Central America, as well as spirituality and religious architecture.
- Dr. Fadeke Castor is Associate Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Northeastern University, with research and teaching interests in religion, race, performance, and the intersectional politics of decolonization. As a Yorùba Ifá initiate of Trinidadian heritage, they are inspired by African spiritual engagements with Black liberation imaginaries and the Black radical tradition. Castor is the author of Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad (Duke University Press, 2017; Clifford Geertz Prize, 2018) and her current research explores the spiritual ontologies and epistemologies of Black Spiritual praxis as shifting our centers of being and ways of knowing towards collective care, healing, and social transformation.
- Florence Goupil is a French-Peruvian documentary photographer working between ethnobotany, environmental and human rights, and the living memory of Indigenous communities. While a Pulitzer Center Rainforest Journalism grantee, she published on cultural revitalization of Indigenous knowledges that were historically suppressed by missionary efforts. She has exhibited internationally and published in The New York Times Magazine, BJP, Fisheye, Atmos, and National Geographic. Florence has received numerous awards, including POY Latam Photographer of the Year, the Magnum Foundation “Heat” Fellowship, and the Latin America Professional Award in the 2025 Sony World Photography Awards.
- Dr. Sergio González is Associate Professor of History at Marquette University. He is a historian of twentieth-century U.S. migration, labor, and religion, and his scholarship explores the intersections between faith and social movements as well as the development of Latino communities in the U.S. Midwest. He is author of Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin (University of Illinois Press, 2024) and co-editor of Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics Since 1945 (New York University Press, 2022). One of his current research projects examines the history of sanctuary movements in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, exploring the pivotal role religious institutions and people of faith have played in developing contemporary social movements for immigrant and refugee justice.
- Dr. Kirsten Lesage is a Research Associate on Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life team, specializing in international survey research. Her research explores religious identities, beliefs and practices around the world. She has worked on surveys examining ‘religious switching’ in 36 countries, religion and spirituality in East Asian societies, and religious tolerance. Kirsten holds a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of California, Riverside.
- Dr. Gustavo Morello, SJ, is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and author of Lived Religion in Latin America: An Enchanted Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2021). As a sociologist of religion, Morello’s research focuses on practices: he studies religion as an ongoing human relation with a supra-human power, rather than focusing on institutional mandates or traditional sociological narratives of secularization or the expansion of religious markets. Morello is also author of The Catholic Church and Argentina’s Dirty War (Oxford University Press, 2015) and has studied religious expression in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile.
Questions?
For more information, contact Monica VanBladel at vanblade@uwm.edu or 414-251-5216.