At Amherst, I enjoy teaching courses that help students to see Latin America in new ways. I teach a course on ways the Latin American masses have struggled for democracy since the independence through today. In a class on US Latinos, students learn the histories of the different ethnic groups that are often lumped together under the categories of Latino or Hispanic. In a research seminar on Race and Nation in the US-Mexican Borderland, students read historical studies from both Mexican and US perspectives. Most of all, they learn to use the wealth of original documents available to reach their own understanding of the role of race and nation in this contested space where people and governments have long struggled over the meanings of ethnicity, race, and national identity. Another research seminar focuses on indigenous people in Latin America to consider the ways indigenous peoples' place within empires, nation, and even within the very idea of "humanity" changed over time, and how, with these changes, the political and economic rights and opportunities for indigenous people, too, have changed. In my course called Environmental History of Latin America students learn about the interconnection between human conflicts (civil wars, imperialist domination, poverty, and so forth) and environmental transformations. Through these and other courses, I urge students to push past the limits of presumptions and pre-conceived categories and, instead, to use historical evidence to figure out for themselves the relationships between particular groups, nations, ethnicities, and environments; how these relationships shape human experience and political and economic structures; and how these relationships have changed over time.

 

COURSES TAUGHT AT AMHERST COLLEGE

  • History 265. Environmental History of Latin America (S2005; S2007; S2008; S2009; S2011; S2014; S2017; F2017)
  • History 165/American Studies 165. An Introduction to U.S. Latino/a History, 1848--Present (S2003; F2016 [With Prof. Solsi Del Moral])
  • History 402/Environmental Studies 401 Wine, History and the Environment. Research seminar (F2011, S2013, S2014 [with Prof. Anna Martini], S2016)
  • History 466 Mexican Visual and Material Culture (F2015)
  • First Year Seminar 114 (formerly FYS 28). Encounters with Nature (co-taught with Prof. Nicola Courtright, Fine Arts (F2010; F2011; F2012; F2014).
  • History 263. Struggles for Democracy in Modern Latin America, 1820 to the present (S2003; S2004; S2005; F2006; F2007; F2008; S2012; S2014; F2017)
  • History 364. Popular Revolution in Modern Mexico (F2004: S2007; S2008; S2009; F2010; F2012)
  • History 467. Research Seminar on Race, Class, and Nation in the US-Mexican Borderland (F2003; F2006; F2007; F2008; S2012)
  • History 35/European Studies 72. Fascism (S2011)
  • History 13. Colonialism and Resistance in Latin America, 1492 to 1820 (F2002; F2003; F2004)
    • Kenan 22. Public Art (Colloquium, team taught with Prof. Carol Clark, Fine Arts) (S2004)
  • History 89. ResearchSeminar on Indigenous Peoples in Latin America (F2002)
  • Special topics (Indigenous Politics; Environmental; Aztecs; Chicano Literature and Identity; Fascism in Latin America; Soccer Clubs in Argentina; The Politics of College Admissions and Orientation; Women and Gender in Public Art in the Americas; Korean Gardens; Wine History)
  • Theses I’ve advised:
    • Tom Fritzsche ’03, “Agribusiness, Labor, and Resistance: Latinos, North American Indians, and Whites in Maine’s Blueberry Harvest, 1970-2002,” magna cum laude
    • Adrian Althoff ’04, “Imagining Bolivianness where City meets Altiplano: Popular Uprisings in El Alto, 1979-2003,” summa cum laude
    • Adam Gonzales ’04, “Constructing Mexican Americanism in South Chicago and the Calumet Region: Steelworkers and Labor Organizations, 1935-1967,” cum laude
    • Jessica Melendez ’04, “The Paradox of Women’s Activism in the Salvadoran Revolutionary Struggle and the Emergence of the Women’s Movement in El Salvador,” magna cum laude
    • Pablo Ruiz ’05, “Dekasegi Immigration and Its Impact on the Nikkei Community in Peru, 1989-2005,” magna cum laude
      • Awarded the Alfred F. Havighurst Prize for Best History Thesis
    • Melissa Ulloa ’07, “A Comparative Study of the Mexican and Chicano Student Movements”
    • Alyssa Briody, ’07, “The Summer Institute of Linguistics and the Huaorani: The Creation and Legacy of a Transnational Space,” cum laude
    • Amos Irwin ’07, “Well, Dam: Mexican Water Policy and the Ejidos of La Laguna, 1936-1964,” magna cum laude
    • Jennifer Suh ’09E, “Representing Ethnic Identity in the Indigenous Movements of Ecuador and Mexico,” magna cum laude
    • Aaron Aruck ’11, “‘Nearly Lost Our Nationality’: Borderland Violence and Mexican Assaults on American Identity”
    • Michelle Fernández ’11, “Mass Media and Mass Violence: How Visual Imagery in Argentina Explains Trauma, Victimhood, and Responsibility During the last Dictatorship (1976-1983),” cum laude
    • Clara Rowe ’11, “Fishing Away Marine Conservation: Poverty, Resource Dependence, and Management in Cuajiniquil, Costa Rica,” summa cum laude
    • Walker Dunn UM ’12, “Mining Interruptions: Neoliberal Globalization and Coal Mining in Appalachia and La Guajira,”summa cum laude
    • Kai Goldynia ’13, The Politicization of the Environment: The Story of the Republican Party and the Environment, 1969-1972,” cum laude
    • Elizabeth (Libby) Blanco ’13, “The Spanish Exile Experience: A Gendered Analysis of the Spanish Refugees in Mexico, 1936-1975,” summa cum laude
    • Sophia Meyerson ’13, “Cuando luchamos, ganamos (When We Fight, We Win): Local Action as a Means for Improving Puerto Rican’ Health in the North End of Springfield, Massachusetts,” summa cum laude
      • Awarded the Asa J. Davis Prize by the History Department.
    • Keri Lambert ’13, “Yu No Sidon, Yu Wan Ledon - Yu Go Fodon: Rice Hunger, and Development in Sierra Leone,” magna cum laude
    • Carlos González ’14, “Empowered Diaspora or Clientalist Politics? An Intergenerational Study of Dominican Transnational Political Attitudes and Involvement,” summa cum laude
    • Alex Healey ’15, “Withering Once Again? A Comparison of Adaptation Responses to Past and Present Viticultural Crises in La Rioja, Spain,” summa cum laude.
      • Awarded the Jan Dizard Prize for Best Honors Thesis in Environmental Studies
    • David Berón Echaverria ’15, “Looking-Glass Paradise: Identity, Economic Growth, and Natural Resource Governance in the Galápagos Islands, 1535-2015,” magna cum laude. 
      • Awarded the Jan Dizard Prize for Best Honors Thesis in Environmental Studies
    • Kat Dominguez ‘16, “Exploitation of Colonial Environments: Japanese Economic Structures in Post-Colonial Memory and Korean Gardens”
    • Vanessa Woodard ’16, “Chains Not Yet Broken: The Separate Legacies of Indigenous Forced Labor and African Slavery in Columbian Society,” cum laude
    • Brittanie Lewis ’17, ““Sociocultural Reproduction, Border Negotiation, and Undocumented Entreprenuership in a California Fleamarke,” summa cum laude.
      • Awarded the Alfred F. Havighurst Prize for Best History Thesis.
    • Laura Noerdlinger ’17, “The Glory of Bordeaux, the Glory of France: The 1855 Classification of the Wines of the Gironde and the Formation of Bordeaux within the French Nation,” summa cum laude
      • Awarded the Asa J. Davis Prize by the History Department.