Spring 2021 Office Hours

On Research Leave; by appointment only

 

Fields

Latin America; Race & Ethnicity; Indigenous History,

 

Bio

My research focuses on the politics of Cold War era international development projects in Latin America and the ways that Indigenous people interacted with, and often appropriated, these projects. My current book project, On Our Own Terms: Development and Indigeneity in Cold War Guatemala, focuses on the ways that a diverse set of actors utilized discourses of international development to redefine the category of “the Indian” in an attempt to integrate the Indigenous population into the nation. I focus not only on the actions and motivations of policymakers but also emphasize the ways that Indigenous people actively participated in these processes, creating alternate versions of development and Indigenous citizenship.

 

I have published two chapters in edited volumes, Latin America and the Global Cold War (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2020) and Out of the Shadow: Revisiting the Revolution from Post-Peace Guatemala (Univ. of Texas Press, 2020), respectively. I have also published an article on local histories of Guatemala’s 1952-54 Agrarian Reform and an article on competing conceptions of utopia and the Guatemalan revolutionary movement. Currently, I am co-editing a special journal issue titled “Interpretative Challenges in the Archive: Rumor, Forgery, and Denunciation in Latin America,” and contributing an article to the edition, which will appear in the Journal of Social History.

 

Courses Taught

HIST 1103 Survey of American History HIST 1823 World History 1500-present HIST 2513/AMST3513/HONR1000 From the Plantation to Your Plate: Bananas, Sugar & Coffee in the Americas

HIST 3303/AMST 3303 Nations on the Move: Latin American Migration and Latinx Communities in the U.S.

HIST 3453 Colonial Latin America HIST 3463 Modern Latin America

HIST 3980 American History Through the Image

HIST4980 Latin American Borderlands and Frontiers (Independent Study)

HIST 5140 Indigenous Latin America (Graduate Readings Seminar)