Category: Latin American and Caribbean History

Professor Hennessy Longlisted for 2020 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Professor Elizabeth Hennessy, whose book On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galapagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden (Yale University Press) was published this year, is on the longlist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award! This award is given for a book that “exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of the …

Forthcoming Book from Alumnus Jacob Blanc

Be on the lookout for good reading material to come later this year! Alumnus Jacob Blanc (Ph.D. 2017), will have his first authored book published in December of 2019. The title is Before the Flood: The Itaipu Dam and the Visibility of Rural Brazil (Duke University Press), and it focuses on the protest movements of rural …

Faculty Receive Vilas Professorships and Awards

Four faculty members have received Vilas Professorships and Awards this year! Professor Francine Hirsch (Russian & European History) received the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professorship, an award recognizing distinguished scholarship as well as outstanding efforts in teaching and service. This Professorship will provide five years of research funding. Professors Nan Enstad (U.S. History) and Neil Kodesh …

Pablo F. Gómez wins the William H. Welch Medal

Pablo F. Gómez, Associate Professor in the departments of History and Medical History and Bioethics, has been awarded the 2019 William H. Welch Medal by the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) for his book The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). …

Professor Patrick Iber has Op-Ed Published in New York Times

Professor Patrick Iber had an op-ed published in the New York Times yesterday, on the subject of U.S.-Venezuelan relations. Professor Iber is a historian of 20th century Latin America and U.S. foreign relations at UW–Madison.  For the full article, click here.  

Professor Gómez’s Book Receives Honorable Mention from Conference in Latin American History

Pablo Gómez’s book The Experiential Caribbean ( University of North Carolina Press, 2017) was awarded the 2018 Honorable Mention of the Bolton-Johnson Prize for the best book in Latin American History by the Conference on Latin American History at the AHA meeting in Chicago this month. The book has also received the 2018 Albert J. Raboteau Book Prize …

Pablo F. Gómez Wins the 2018 Albert J. Raboteau Book Prize

Pablo F. Gómez’s The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic wins the 2018 Albert J. Raboteau Book Prize Official Press Release Indianapolis, Indiana– University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor Pablo F. Gómez’s The Experiential Caribbean (UNC Press, 2017) has won the 2018 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions. Gómez’s carefully-researched …

Article – “The politics of a natural laboratory: Claiming territory and governing life in the Galápagos Islands” by Elizabeth Hennessy

The Galápagos Islands are often called a natural laboratory of evolution. This metaphor provides a powerful way of understanding space that, through scientific research, conservation and tourism, has shaped the archipelago over the past century. Combining environmental histories of field science with political ecologies of conservation biopower, this article foregrounds the territorial production of the …

Article – “History in an Age of Fake News” by Patrick Iber

We work and live in a time when historical knowledge has become intensely politicized. That knowledge is political is hardly new, but the rise of Donald Trump has heightened the polarization. His administration governs with a torrent of disorienting dishonesty, and his cry of “fake news” seems to mean less that the news in question …

UW History alum Martín Espada recognized with Distinguished Lifetime Achievement award for poetry

The Poetry Foundation is pleased to announce the winner of the 2018 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which honors a living US poet for outstanding lifetime achievement. Martín Espada is awarded the prize in recognition of his contribution to poetry. He is the first Latino poet to win this award since its inception in 1986. The …