Historian of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Latin America, Professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo has appeared in a series of media appearances in February 2026. Recently, Professor Meléndez-Badillo collaborated with global superstar Bad Bunny in the creation of historical narratives that accompanied each song’s YouTube visualizer in DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. He also wrote 40 historical and cultural short …
UW-Madison History Professor Marcella Hayes’ forthcoming book, Black Self-Governance: The Making of Political Culture in Seventeenth-Century Lima, is already receiving praise. Black Self-Governance has won the 2025 Founder’s Prize for manuscripts in development from the Sixteenth Century Society. The book will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2026. Black people were the …
Launched in October, UW–Madison’s Puerto Rican Studies Hub is the first initiative of its kind in the Midwest and is already emerging as a dynamic center for scholarship, public engagement, and community connection. Supported by a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Hub brings together historians, artists, students, and community members …
Professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo recently collaborated with artist Bad Bunny on his latest project. Accompanying the songs on Bad Bunny’s sixth album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos”, 17 visualizers were released on January 5. The visualizers feature historical notes, written by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, highlighting different eras and figures in Puerto Rico’s political and social justice past. After …
Professor Marla Ramírez and two undergraduate students, Lezly Vejar and Zevdah Drizin, presented on their original research at the 2023 Oral History Association Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland this October. The presentation, titled “Latinxs in Wisconsin: Using Oral History in the Classroom to Document Latinx Immigration and Placemaking,” highlighted oral histories conducted in Professor Ramírez’s …
Professor Marla Ramirez won the Oral History Association’s Article Award for her essay titled, “Gendered banishment: Rewriting Mexican repatriation through a transgenerational oral history methodology.” This award was created to recognize an article or essay that uses oral history to “make a significant contribution to contemporary scholarship; significantly advances understanding of important theoretical issues in …
Alum Tamara Feinstein (Ph.D., 2013) recently published a new book titled, The Fate of Peruvian Democracy: Political Violence, Human Rights, and the Legal Left. Description: Tamara Feinstein investigates the bloody Shining Path conflict’s effect on the legal Left in late-twentieth-century Peru, illustrating the catastrophic impact state and insurgent violence can have on the growth and …
The Department of History is excited to welcome three new faculty members – Khaled Esseissah, Michael Martoccio, and Jorell Meléndez-Badillo! Khaled Esseissah joins us as a historian of Islam, colonialism, slavery, race, and gender, with a focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century West Africa. Professor Esseissah is currently working on his book manuscript, Emancipation, Authority, and …
The Department of History is excited to welcome three new faculty members – Simon Balto, Marcella Hayes, and Matt Villeneuve! Simon Balto joins us as a historian of the twentieth-century United States, with a particular focus and expertise in African American history. Professor Balto’s first book, Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black …
Professor Pablo Gómez has a new book published this week, titled The Gray Zones of Medicine: Healers and History in Latin America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). The book was co-edited by Diego Armus, a professor of Latin American history at Swarthmore College, and features contributions from scholars such as UW-Madison historian James Sweet. “Health practitioners working …