Emory's highly competitive Ph.D. in Latin American History provides students with an intimate, rigorous, and individually tailored graduate experience. The University's active Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, which includes over fifty graduate students in varied courses of study, complements graduate offerings in History, and encourages interdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching. Faculty in Latin American History include Dr. Yanna Yannakakis, a specialist in colonial Mexico whose work focuses on ethnohistory, law, and inter-ethnic politics, and Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, who studies modern Brazil with a focus on issues of ethnicity, race and national identity. Among areas of topical strength are questions of national identity and immigration for the national period and the interface of indigenous peoples with imperial institutions during the colonial period. The area of Latin American History is especially strong in the histories of Brazil and Mexico and in approaches including social and cultural history.

The History Ph.D. program provides students with rigorous training in their fields of specialization while encouraging comparative study. Students entering the program in Latin American History will take the required “Topics in Latin American History” seminar in both their first and third semesters as they prepare for fields in the modern and colonial periods (as well as a third thematic field of their own design). The faculty is particularly committed to student professionalization and Ph.D. candidates are encouraged to learn about fellowship writing, pedagogy and comparative approaches in complementary fields and disciplines including anthropology and literature. Students have a wide range of course opportunities in areas like race and ethnicity, gender, law, political culture, religion, and Atlantic World studies. Graduate students in Latin American History in the last few years have won Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, and Social Science Research Council grants, and our Ph.D.’s are in tenure track positions across the United States and Latin America. For further information about the Latin American students, see

 
Students in the Latin American Program
 
 

Current Latin American Graduate Students and their Topics (2009-10)

Alex Borucki: "From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in Montevideo, 1770-1850"
Agnieszka Czeblakow: "Crime and Punishment in colonial Ecuador"
Louise Gammons: "Gender and Law in Colonial Mexico"
Glen Goodman: "German migrant communities in the Southern Cone and Brazil"
Rachel Lambrecht: "Nation and State in 19th century Rio de la Plata"
Leonardo Marques: "Slavers in a New World: US Slave Traders, Public Opinion, and the Suppression of the Slave Trade to the United States, Brazil, and Cuba"
Alicia Monroe: "Race and Gender in Modern Brazil"
Uri Rosenheck: "Fighting for Home Abroad: Remembrance and Oblivion of World War II in Brazil"
Jennifer Schaefer: "Representations of Youth and Young People during the Last Military Dictatorship in Argentina, 1976-1983"
Ariel Svarch: "Latin American Ethnic and Diasporic Studies and the Minority Contribution to Popular Culture"
Lena Oak Suk: "Ir ao Cinema: Movie-going Culture and Urban Space in São Paulo, Brazil. 1920-1950"
Jorge Troisi-Melean: "Religion, Identity and Politics in Late Colonial and Early Modern Argentina"
Cari Williams: "A Nation with a Child's Face: Images of National Identity and Childhood in Brazil, 1922-1954"

Recipients of the Ph.D degree in Latin American History (1998-2009) and current jobs they hold.

Rafael Rossotto Ioris: Department of History, University of Denver: "'Fifty Years in Five:' and What is it for Us? Popular Perspectives on Development and Political Stability in 1950s Brazil" (2009)
Fabricio Prado: Department of History, Roosevelt University: "Social Networks, Identity, and Sovereignty in Rio de la Plata Borderlands" (2009)
Mollie Lewis: Department of History, University of South Alabama: "Con Men, Cooks, and Cinema Kings: Popular Culture and Jewish Identities in Buenos Aires, 1905-1930." (2008)
Cathy Marie Ouellette: Department of History, Muhlenberg College: "Two Times Brazilian: Rio Grande do Sul and the Making of the Nation, 1891-1930.” (2008)
Viviana L. Grieco: Department of History, University of Missouri, Kansas City: "Politics and Public Credit: The Limits of Absolutism in Late Colonial Buenos Aires" (2005)
Michael Perri, Department of History, Texas A & M University, Texarkana: “The Spanish Conquest of the Pearl Coast and the
     Search for the Province of the Meta” (2004)
Frank Trey Proctor, Department of History, Denison University: “Slavery, Identity, and Culture: An Afro-Mexican Counterpoint,
     1640-1763” (2003)
Maria N. Marsilli, Department of History, John Carroll University: “God & Evil in the Gardens of the Andean South:
     Mid-Colonial Rural Religion in the Diocese of Arequipa” (2002)
Ondina Gonzalez, Agnes Scott College: “The Innocents: Children of Colonial Spanish America with a Case Study of
     Eighteenth-Century Havana” (2001)
Jason Lemon, “The Encomienda in Early New Spain” (2000)
Gustavo Paz, Department of History, Universidad de Buenos Aires and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas,
     Argentina: “Province and Nation in Northern Argentina: Peasants, Elite, and the State, Jujuy 1780-1880” (1999)
Jacqueline Holler, Department of History, University of Northern British Columbia: “Escogidas Plantas: Nuns and Beatas in
     Mexico City, 1531-1601” (1998)