Department of History

Social History (link opens RTF file)

La República (Lima, Peru)

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This Field Seminar introduces some major debates and literatures about Latin American history since 1820. It is designed for MA-level students who intend to go on to a Ph.D. in Latin American History, though advanced students from other geographic concentrations, disciplines, and area universities are more than welcome.

The focus is mainly historiographical or methodological: We critically engage–via intensive readings, weekly discussions, and debate–about ten model monographs in the field. Rather than cover all of the “great books” in this vibrant field, whether of trendy or classic vintage, we’ll concentrate on a broad theme found through much recent historiography: nation-building, nationalisms, nationality, and the construction of national identities in the region. The seminar begins by revisiting Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (a book which has worked its influence everywhere) and by sharpening some perspectives on questions of nationality. Then, with close readings of a dozen or so major new monographs, we’ll examine diverse angles on Latin American “nationalisms”: from the cultural, peasant, regional, and ethnic nation to the revolutionary, gendered, and even trans-national kind. (Sorry: some obvious topics, such as economic or labor nationalism, or citizenship and nation, get overlooked here) We hope to end up with a critical awareness of how well Latin American historians–at least those working in the United States– have deployed such concepts for post-colonial Spanish America, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

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This Theme Seminar, intended primarily for aspiring Ph.D. students from any regional concentration or discipline, explores the history of what anthropologist Sidney Mintz calls the “food-drugs”–sugar, tobacco, coffee, alcohol, betel, chocolate, yerba mate, coca and the like.  It examines their creation as commodities and their powerful historical contributions to colonialism, capitalism and modernity.  More broadly, it is an introduction to the “new” commodity history and its expanding global horizons.  The core thematic questions posed are:  How were these food-drug commodities “constructed” out of things and/or from long-standing embedded social relationships?  How did certain local substances become profitable long-distance commodities after the 16^th-century world conquests and become accepted and popular objects of mass consumption?  Why did others become eventually categorized, during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, as unworthy, dangerous or illicit goods?  How did this commercial “psycho-active revolution” affect, culturally, politically and economically, the making of the modern world?  Students will take on interdisciplinary literatures (from Anthropology and Sociology) about commodity-formation and a broad series of recent monographs on particular substances, ending on those now deemed illicit.  About half of the literature is based on American-hemisphere substances and their global entanglements.

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Within the thematic and cross-national emphasis of the history doctorate at Stony Brook, Latin American history remains a thriving area concentration. Indeed, Stony Brook is recognized as one of the country’s top Ph.D. training centers in Latin American history. Since 1990, Stony Brook has awarded more than two dozen doctorates in this field, and Stony Brook students go onto important teaching posts across North America and Latin America. Our students have won an impressive share, both nationally and at Stony Brook, of international fellowships for their doctoral research, such as Fulbrights and SSRC grants. They also benefit from such programs as a Stony Brook-LACS Tinker Fellowship for overseas summer travel research.

The field centers around the leadership of internationally-renowned professors Brooke Larson and Paul Gootenberg, and Latin Americanists students also work with related scholars within the History Department, such as Roxborough, Anderson, Wilson, and Cronopoulos. The university is committed to further faculty appointments in Latin American history. Students also collaborate with distinguished Latin Americanist scholars in other fields such as Sociology, Hispanic Languages, and Music, integrated by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies center (LACS), which is located in the History Department. Stony Brook doctoral students can interact with counterparts from Columbia, N.Y.U. and other New York area institutions through activities of the New York City Workshop on Latin American History, which is currently hosted at Stony Brook-Manhattan. Students have ample opportunity for developing their teaching skills in summer and adjunct positions, and participate in an annual international Latin Americanist graduate conference organized by LACS.

A Stony Brook training in Latin American history excels in several ways. It is rooted in a vibrant and collegial community which brings together young working historians from Latin America itself–Peruvians, Argentines, Chileans, and others–with their peers from North America. Moreover, each student, regardless of their country or topical specialization, develops a close-knit mentoring relationship with each of our professors, who emphasize comparative, methodological, and interpretative skills in the development of new and critical perspectives on Latin American history.