Faculty by Undergraduate Concentration
All history majors select a geographic region of concentration as their primary area of study: Americas and Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and the Mediterranean World. Majors are encouraged to get to know the faculty in their region of concentration as early as possible.
History majors are also encouraged to carve out their own unique thematic research pathway — religion, social movements, science and environment, and gender, to name a few — and to get to know the history faculty who specialize in those research areas.
***Click on a faculty member's name to view their detailed profile information.***
- Title
- Provost, Stevenson College
- Professor
- Division Humanities Division
- Department
- Stevenson College
- History Department
- Affiliations Latin American & Latino Studies, Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas
- Phone 831-459-5199 (office)
- Office Location
- Humanities Building 1, 537
- Office Hours Fall 24 -- Mondays 2-3 or via appointment. For both options, please make an appointment in advance via email.
- Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services
- Mailing Address
- 1156 High Street
- Santa Cruz CA 95064
- Courses HIS 11B, Latin America: National Period; HIS 100, History Skills and Methods; HIS 134A, Colonial Mexico; HIS 134B, History of Mexico, 1850 to Present; HIS 190H, History of Time; HIS 190T, Latin America in the Cold War; HIS 204C, Colonialism, Nationalism and Race Research Seminar; HIS 280A, History Graduate Proseminar: Teaching Pedagogy
Research Interests
Mexico and Latin America; religion; political culture; history of time; bioprospecting and history of medicine
Biography, Education and Training
Ph. D. University of California, San Diego
B.A., University of California, Berkeley
Honors, Awards and Grants
National Endowment for the Humanities, Public Scholar, 2023-24
American Council of Learned Societies, Fellowship, 2013-14
American Philosophical Society, Franklin Research Grant, 2013-14
Kimberly S. Hanger Article Prize, 2013
Thomas McGann Award (book prize), 2010
James Alexander Robertson Memorial Prize for best article, American Historical Association-Conference on Latin American History, 2007
National Endowment for the Humanities, Faculty Research Award, 2005-6
Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in American Indian Studies, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, 2004-2005
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, The John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, R.I., 2004
Selected Publications
- Books
- The History of the Future in Colonial Mexico (Yale University Press, 2018).
- A Flock Divided: Race, Religion, and Politics in Mexico, 1749-1857 (Duke University Press, 2010).
- Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America, co-edited with Andrew Fisher (Duke University Press, 2009)
- Articles / Book Chapters
- "The Shadows of Curare: Histories and pre-Histories of Pharmaceutical Research in the Amazon," History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals 63, no. 2 (2022): 247-269.
- "How to Read the Rock Face?: Getting Old in the Archive of Postcolonial Mexico," Hispanic American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (2022): 387-414.
- "Time and Christianity in Early Latin America," in Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity, eds. Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, David Orique, and Manuel Vásquez (Oxford University Press, 2019): 23-38.
- "Confession and the Art of Reading," in Imagining Histories of Colonial Latin America: Synoptic Methods and Practices, eds. Karen Melvin and Sylvia Sellers-García (University of New Mexico Press, 2017)
- "Anxiety and the Future at Mexican Independence," in Emotions and Daily Life in Colonial Mexico, eds. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Javier Villa-Flores (University of New Mexico Press, 2014): 198-220.
- "The History of Time in Colonial Latin America," History Compass 11, no. 1 (2013): 77-88.
- "The Supple Whip: Innovation and Tradition in Mexican Catholicism," American Historical Review 117, no. 5 (2012): 1373-1401.
- “El capital espiritual y la política local: la ciudad de México y curatos rurales en el México central,” in Religión, Política e Identidad en la Independencia de México, ed. Brian Connaughton (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, 2010).
- "The Orthodox Underworld of Colonial Mexico," Colonial Latin American Review 17, no. 2 (2008): 233-250.
- “Racial Identities and Their Interpreters in Colonial Latin America” (co-authored with Andrew Fisher) in Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America, Matthew O’Hara and Andrew Fisher, eds. (Duke University Press, 2009): 1-34.
- “Miserables and Citizens: Indians, Legal Pluralism, and Religious Practice in Early Republican Mexico” in Religious Culture in Modern Mexico, ed. Martin Nesvig (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007): 14-34.
- “Stone, Mortar, and Memory: Church Construction and Communities in Late Colonial Mexico City” Hispanic American Historical Review 86:4 (2006): 647-680.
- “Politics and Piety: The Church in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century Mexico,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 17:1 (2001): 213-231.