Contributors

CONTRIBUTORS Dr. M. Fernanda Astiz is Associate Professor and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Canisius College, Buffalo, NY. Her main areas of teaching, research, and writing are in comparative education policy with special interest in Latin America’s schooling and national identity formation , school-community relationships, and the politics of educational governance. Claudia N. Avellaneda is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Her research interests include public management, comparative politics, and comparative public policy with a regional focus on Latin America. Specifically, she studies the impact that mayoral qualifications have on decision making and local government performance. She also examines the determinants of innovation and its effects on government performance. Her research has been published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Public Management Review, and Journal of Management Studies. Felipe Botero holds a Ph.D. in political science from University of Arizona and an M.A. in social sciences from The University of Chicago. He is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the department of political science at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. His research interests includes party system institutionalization, electoral systems and democratic performance. He recently edited Partidos y elecciones en Colombia (Ediciones Uniandes, 2011) and ¿Juntos pero no revueltos? Partidos, candidatos y campañas en las elecciones legislativas de 2006 en Colombia (Ediciones Uniandes, 2009). He coauthored, with Arlene B. Tickner, Colombia y el mundo, 2010. Opinión pública y política internacional (Ediciones Uniandes, 2011). Dan Cozart is an incoming Ph.D. student in Latin American History at the University of New Mexico. He completed his M.A. in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon is an associate professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University. Her research interests include comparative politics and public policy/public administration. In particular she has published on legislatures in Latin America, issues of decentralization, and questions of women’s representation in the executive branch. She is presently engaged in a comparative study of cabinets in presidential democracies with a specific emphasis on women’s participation. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Policy Studies Journal, and Publius: The Journal of Federalism. C  2012 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc 1 The Latin Americanist, June 2012 Alan McPherson is Associate Professor of International and Area Studies and ConocoPhillips Petroleum Chair in Latin American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Yankee No! Anti-Americanism in U.S.-Latin American Relations and is working on a book about resistance to U.S. occupations in Latin America. Marcelo Passini Mariano is a Professor at São Paulo State University (UNESP) and researcher at the Center for Studies on Contemporary Culture (CEDEC). E-mail: marcelopmariano@gmail.com. Haroldo Ramanzini Júnior is a Professor at Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU) and researcher at the Center for Studies on Contemporary Culture (CEDEC). E-mail: hramanzinijunior@gmail.com. James Ramey is Associate Professor of Humanities at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa in Mexico City. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley and has published articles in Comparative Literature, James Joyce Quarterly, Comparative Literature Studies and College Literature. He is co-editor of México imaginado: Nuevos enfoques sobre el cine (trans)nacional (UAM-CONACULTA, 2011). Renee G. Scherlen is associate professor of political science in the Department of Government & Justice Studies at Appalachian State University. Her primary focus of research is Latin America and the drug war, and her publications include Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics (SUNY Press, 2nd edition forthcoming), co-authored with Dr. Matthew Robinson. 2 ...