HS17: Modern Latin American History
About
Our group fosters regional intellectual and scholarly exchange between faculty and graduate students whose work spans the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and addresses questions of method and historiography in and beyond mainland Spanish America.
Open to New People
Active since: 2025
- Syracuse University
- Cornell University
Collaborative Goals
The Modern Latin American History Working Group has three goals. First, we aim to foster collaboration among historians of modern Latin America, spread across various corridor institutions, and lay the groundwork for future conference panels, invited talks, and co-edited volumes. Our geographic scope will be inclusive and cover not only mainland Spanish America but also Portuguese, French, English, and Dutch-speaking areas. There is at least one historian of modern Latin America at each corridor institution but many of them have only recently moved to CNY and have yet to meet each other or create meaningful connections. Second, many of the corridor institutions have new cohorts of domestic and international graduate students that would greatly benefit from engaging with faculty at various stages of their careers. History departments continue to shrink and travel to larger national and international conferences presents financial barriers. A regional network of historians will provide invaluable professional development opportunities and intellectual and scholarly support. Our workshops of works-in-progress provide critical feedback that enhances scholarship and a supportive atmosphere in which to test new ideas. Books and dissertations are rarely individual endeavors. All scholarship is a product of collective engagement, and the working group is committed to ensuring that our rich intellectual exchanges help advance the individual goals of participants as we push the historiographic, methodological, and theoretical boundaries of our field. Third, our workshops will lay the groundwork for long-term regional collaboration. Each year, we aim to increase the number of activities and the intensity of such interactions. For instance, in year two, we aim to bring innovative Latin American historians to our region for invited talks and workshops, and in our third year, we envision a writing retreat that supports the completion of a concrete product (article, book, etc).
Group Organizers
