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This guide has been put together by the Subject Librarian for the UCL Institute of the Americas and is relevant to all students in this department. You will find here an overview of the library resources and support available to you to help you in your studies or research.
Use the menu to find out what is available, including:
Additionally, take a virtual tour of the Main Library. This is the home library for students studying the Americas.
Please get in touch through the help channels of this page if you have any enquiries!
Key resources in your subject area include:
Archive of important scholarly journals. Core resource. Accessibility statement for JSTOR.
Best streamed on Chrome, Safari, or Edge. Providing video streaming to over 26,000 films including thousands of award-winning documentaries, training films and theatrical releases. The collection includes a number of leading producers, such as the Criterion Collection, PBS, Kino Lorber, New Day Films, The Great Courses, California Newsreel, BBC and hundreds more. Accessibility statement for Kanopy.
This database provides more than 50 fully searchable Latin American newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring titles from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and elsewhere
The second series of digitized Latin American Newspapers expands the number of searchable titles available from this region. Providing issues from more than 250 additional titles, this online series includes newspapers published in English, Spanish and Portuguese from 20 countries, including some countries and cities not represented in the inaugural collection of Latin American Newspapers.
Search the historical archive of The Guardian, The Observer, The Irish Times and The Weekly Irish Times, The South China Morning Post, The Korea Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of India and 31 major American newspapers including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and the Chinese Newspapers collection. Click on 'Change Databases' and scroll down to see which titles are selected for searching
See the LibrarySkills@UCL guide to Scopus. Multi-disciplinary database containing references to journal articles, conference proceedings, trade publications, book series and web resources. Please use IE 8 or higher, Google Chrome or Firefox browsers.
Access for UCL students and staff only. Statista is an online portal for statistics consolidating statistical data on over 80,000 topics from more than 22,500 sources and covering over 170 different industries. UCL users do not have access to the Company database or the Global Consumer Survey. The Research AI assistant can provide useful insights into Statista data, but be aware of the limitations of using generative AI for your academic work.
See the LibrarySkills@UCL guide to Web of Science. Defaults to Web of Science Core Collection, which searches citation indexes containing details of scholarly journal articles, conference proceedings and selected book chapters from all academic disciplines; select 'All Databases' option from the drop down menu to cross-search all UCL's subscribed Web of Science products, including Biosis.
This book traces guaraná’s journey from a sacred pre-Columbian crop of the Sateré-Mawé in the Amazon to a global commodity and Brazilian national symbol. Seth Garfield explores how colonialism, science, and marketing transformed guaraná into the centerpiece of a multibillion-dollar beverage industry, revealing its role in shaping Brazil’s social hierarchies, environmental change, and myths of modernity.
Urban Dwellings, Haitian Citizenships examines the failed international reconstruction of Port-au-Prince after the 2010 earthquake and contrasts it with Haitian-led rebuilding efforts. It argues that international development strategies institutionalize instability, while everyday Haitians transform urban spaces to create belonging and citizenship rooted in resistance to extractive economies. Through scenes of ruined industrial projects and city life, the book reflects on what dwelling means in post-disaster landscapes.
Money shapes our lives as a problem, goal, motivator, and measure of worth—but what happens when communities reinvent it? For 25 years, grassroots activists in Medellín, Colombia, have used barter markets and community currencies to rebuild social ties torn by violence and create an economy based on respect and reciprocity. Social Exchange by Brian J. Burke offers an ethnographic look at this movement, revealing the cultural and material impacts of capitalism and narco-violence, and exploring radical alternatives to urban life and post-capitalist possibilities.
This study uses household survey data to derive subjective poverty lines for seven Latin American countries and compares them with objective measures. Subjective poverty is consistently higher, with most identified poor either poor by both measures or only subjectively. Overlap varies by country, and unemployment and informality explain why some feel poor despite higher incomes. Non-income factors tied to economic security reduce perceived poverty, and welfare stigma appears absent.
Incumbency Bias challenges the traditional view that incumbency guarantees electoral success. It argues that democratic institutions determine whether incumbency is an asset or liability by shaping the match between citizens’ expectations and incumbents’ ability to deliver. Using comparative evidence from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, the book shows that democracy can create an uneven playing field when voters demand good governance but lack information. While focused on Latin America, its insights apply globally to understanding the electoral returns of holding office.
Erotic Cartographies explores how Trinidadian same-sex-loving women use gender performance, erotic autonomy, and space-making to challenge colonial norms and invisibility. Through mapping exercises and personal narratives, the book reveals how they redefine public/private spaces, family, and spirituality to resist structural and symbolic violence.
Analyses decolonisation and non-sovereignty in the Caribbean, including grassroots protest movements, offshore finance and remittance culture. Covering global history and politics, as well as contemporary Caribbean history, this book will appeal to historians, political scientists and students of decolonisation, non-sovereignty and colonialism.
Racialized Visions is the first English-language volume examining Haiti’s cultural impact on Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Centering Haiti, it reveals how race—and anti-Blackness—shaped regional and academic narratives since 1804, when colonial powers cast Haiti as a symbol of Blackness and barbarism. This collection of twelve essays challenges that legacy, showing how artists and intellectuals reimagined Haiti as a symbol of liberation. Edited by Vanessa K. Valdés with a foreword by Myriam J. A. Chancy, it offers historical context and insights into Afro-Latinx studies.
Exploring the Mesoamerican Subterranean Realm examines how pre-Columbian cultures used caves and constructed underground spaces for sacred, political, and economic purposes. Through case studies, it challenges traditional views of chultuns, sascaberas, and pilgrimage, revealing a vast subterranean sacred landscape central to Mesoamerican life.
Buyers Beware offers a fresh lens on consumption in Caribbean popular culture. Revisiting representations from dancehall and “sistah lit”—genres rejecting middle-class respectability—Patricia Joan Saunders treats these texts with the same rigor as dominant cultural narratives. She explores how their focus on fashion, music, sex, fast food, and television illuminates the construction and performance of race, class, gender, sexuality, and national politics within the Caribbean.
The Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics examines artistic and conceptual approaches to the more-than-human environment across literature, performance, film, and activism. It revisits key ideas—ecocriticism, extractivism, multinaturalism—while connecting them to race theory, energy humanities, queer/trans studies, and infrastructure studies. By tracing genealogies and mapping debates, it shows how cultural production addresses urgent environmental issues and challenges the nature/culture divide, offering tools for environmental humanities and Latin American studies.
In the 1970s, Latin American theologians were instrumental in developing the concept of integral mission. This volume explores how contemporary Latin American theologians are building on the legacy of integral mission--and the controversies it raised--to reflect on a wide range of issues such as the economy, culture, the environment, discrimination, and transcultural missions. Drawing on authors from across the continent, this volume offers valuable insights into the diversity and richness of current Latin American missiological reflection.
From Jackson to Bush, U.S. presidents have used rhetoric to define national identity—expanding citizenship for some while justifying exclusion of others. Stuckey traces two centuries of presidential speech, showing how shared ideals and historical references are deployed to naturalize inclusion or legitimize marginalization, revealing shifting boundaries of “us” and “them.”
For centuries, racism and discrimination have blocked economic opportunity for African Americans, leaving Black households with just 10 cents for every dollar of white wealth. This book makes a powerful case for reparations, documenting the cumulative harm of slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing discrimination, calculating the cost of justice denied, and proposing substantial direct payments to descendants of U.S. slavery.
Hemispheric foreign policy has waxed and waned since the Mexican War, and the Cold War presented both extraordinary promises and dangerous threats to U.S.-Latin American cooperation. In Hemispheric Alliances, Andrew J. Kirkendall examines the strengths and weaknesses of new models for U.S.-Latin American relations created by liberal Democrats who came to the fore during the Kennedy administration and retained significant influence until the Reagan era.
Operation Pedro Pan examines the Cold War program that brought over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children to the U.S. between 1961 and 1962. Sponsored by the Miami Catholic Diocese, government agencies, and anti-Castro groups, the initiative provided care for 8,300 minors through foster and group homes nationwide. Drawing on interviews and newly uncovered sources, the book reveals how and why this unprecedented effort was conceived.
This biography of Colonel Lionel Jobert d’Epineuil (1829–1881) explores the exploits of a French-born adventurer whose ambition outweighed allegiance during the American Civil War. A ship captain with an Atlantic identity, Jobert leveraged political instability in Haiti and the U.S. to advance his own interests. Drawing on previously unused sources, Stephen D. Bosworth offers a vivid portrait of a foreign participant whose life adds a striking tile to the mosaic of nineteenth-century Atlantic history.
Life Undocumented explores the experiences of Latinx undocumented young adults in two contrasting contexts: California, with legal pathways to higher education, and Georgia, with restrictive policies. Through these distinct “legal ecologies,” the book reveals how intersecting federal, state, local, and personal dynamics shape daily life and future aspirations for undocumented youth.
Primary Elections and American Politics traces the roots of polarization, negative partisanship, and declining trust in U.S. politics to the rise of direct partisan primaries. Chapman Rackaway and Joseph Romance provide a comprehensive history of this Progressive-era reform, arguing that its creators mistook direct democracy for participatory democracy—setting the stage for many of today’s political ills.
Thirty years after its original release, the new edition of Racial Formation in the United States radically revises each chapter while preserving its core mission: to explain how race is constructed, contested, and embedded in identities and institutions. Michael Omi and Howard Winant address contemporary racial dynamics—from demographic shifts and the erosion of civil rights to Islamophobia, immigrant rights movements, intersectionality, and the Obama presidency—offering an updated account of race’s central role in U.S. politics and society.
