Graduate Programs

In the late 1960s, in the context of a rapid growth of area studies in U.S. higher education, the Department of History at the University of Maryland initiated a graduate program in Latin American history. The program remained modestly-sized through the early 1990s, principally training a handful of master of arts students in various historical topics in Mesoamerica, Venezuela, the Caribbean, and the Southern Cone.

After new faculty hires and programmatic investments in the mid-to-late 1990s, the graduate program in Latin American history has emerged as one of the top in the United States, led by nationally-ranked faculty who have been able to attract highly qualified students from throughout the Americas. The students' success includes several major external fellowships awarded in support of innovative doctoral research. The program's most recent doctoral recipients are employed in tenure-track jobs or related work of their choice.

The program is structured around a comprehensive sequence of historiographies, methodological, and research and writing seminars that prepare students to choose a research focus from a range of geographic regions, nation-states, and time periods. The program encourages transnational, comparative, and interdisciplinary approaches.

Student Profiles

In Fall 2006, the program numbers thirteen doctoral students, whose undergraduate training ranges from small liberal arts colleges to major research institutions in the United States, Latin America, and Canada. Six of the students are international.

Research of current students and recent graduates focuses on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Cuba and covers themes as diverse as the transition from slave to free labor in Rio de Janeiro commerce, urban planning and development in Rio and Buenos Aires, middle class formation in Mexico and Colombia, the political culture of cartooning in revolutionary Cuba, film and politics in Argentina and Brazil, the histories of African cultures in Mexico and Brazil, and the impact of the Cold War on national history and patrimony in Mexico. The most recent arrivals are developing research interests in the history of the African Diaspora in Latin America and the politics of the left in modern Mexico.

In the summer 2006, two students participated in the Oaxaca Institute in Modern Mexican history while others worked on predissertation and dissertation research in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires.

Courses

Graduate courses taught by the Department of History that are appropriate for the study of Latin America include:

HIST 408: Enslavement and Emancipation in the Americas
HIST 471 History of Brazil
HIST 473 History of the Caribbean
HIST 474 History of Argentina
HIST 475 History of the Mexican Revolution
HIST 608 General Seminar: Colonial Latin America
HIST 608 General Seminar: 19th-Century Latin America
HIST 608 General Seminar: 20th-Century Latin America
HIST 619 Gender and Nation
HIST 619 Modern Mexico
HIST 619 Women in the Modern Americas
HIST 619 Readings in the History of the Early Modern Iberian World
HIST 619D Readings in the History of the Black Atlantic
HIST 619X Research Methods and Sources in Latin American History
HIST 639 Readings in Atlantic History
HIST 778 Readings in Latin American History
HIST 829 Seminar in Latin American History

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