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.***

Matt O'Hara
  • 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)
  • Email
  • 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