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History Magazine: Bridging

Home > Graduate Studies > Areas of Graduate Study : Latin American History

Latin American History

This is a very exciting time for doing Latin American history. The boom in social history continues, while newer approaches influenced by cultural studies, gender analysis, legal studies, and new political history have also taken off. Current research is integrating the insights of social history into a fresh analysis of politics and state formation, examining how groups such as indigenous communities, urban workers, and women both reacted to and helped shape state policies and national identities. In addition, as we enter a new millennium, historians continue to challenge traditional periodizations; many studies, for example, now bridge the late colonial and early republican eras.

Rodolfo Gutierrez: I found many people working on Latin American issues, in one way or another, and the multidisciplinary environment works in the right sense to build a better vision of any historical issue in the field in which I'm interested. The people in the Department, faculty and my classmates, are really different — different from any other department, because you can count on anybody whenever you need help. Finally, I'm surprised by the publications and different sources the University has on Latin America, even better than other universities in the country.

Minnesota's Latin American program has strengths in many of these diverse areas. Additionally, the geographic strengths of the History faculty cover much of the continent, with particular strengths in MesoAmerica, Chile, Peru, and Colombia. Sarah Chambers' research is influenced by cultural studies, gender analysis, legal studies and new political history, and focuses particularly on the transition period from the colonial to republican eras. Patrick McNamara does research on peasant politics in nineteenth and twentieth-century Mexico, with a focus on state formation and national identities. Jeffery Pilcher works on Mexican cultural history, with a particular interest in food and its relation to globalization.

Several of the Department's centers and workshops include comparative perspectives to Latin American history, such as the Center for Early Modern History (including historians of Spain Carla Phillips and William Phillips), the Colonial Workshop (which includes comparative papers on the Caribbean and Latin America in addition to its core of early United States history), and the Comparative Women's History Workshop. Finally, many students take courses in other departments with excellent faculty in areas like Latin American politics and Spanish and Portuguese literature.

Graduate Features

Graduate Studies
Rachel Ayers
1130 Heller Hall
271 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Phone: 612-624-5840
Email: histdgs@umn.edu

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