My teaching focuses on Latin American history and migration history. I am also interested in comparative history and in experimenting with ways to include hands-on, research activities to enhance classroom experiences and create avenues for students’ intellectual exploration as a joint endeavor characterized by collaborative learning.
In addition so general surveys of Latin American history, some recent topics courses include:
Latin American-U.S. Relations
Latin American Migrations in the United States
Immigration, Race, and the Nation in Latin America
World Migrations since 1850
I also teach the Latin American, Latinx, and Caribbean Studies senior seminar on a regular basis.
Over the last twenty years, I have been involved in developing and teaching mosaics in collaboration with colleagues from other departments and students with different majors and interests. These are courses that take students out of the classroom to work about and with diverse communities in different parts of the world through fieldwork and research. I was fortunate to be a part of the first international mosaic Dickinson offered (the Patagonia Mosaic, in Argentina) in 2001, and have been fortunate to collaborate in several more since (and plan to do so in new mosaics in the future). Because of my teaching and research interests, these mosaics have looked at historical and contemporary examples of migration experiences in several parts of the world, including Argentina, Mexico, France, Italy, Morocco, Spain, and the United States. All of them, included collaborative work with faculty and students.
To find more about Dickinson Mosaics, visit the Mosaic Page.
For highlights of specific mosaics in which I have participated, with examples of student work, visit:
Mediterranean Migration Mosaics: 2013 and 2016
Mexican Migration Mosaic: 2003 and 2011
Patagonia Mosaics: 2001, 2003, and 2005
Patagonia Mosaic Photographic collection
An Argentine Mosaic: Destino Patagonia (10-minute preview of a 71-minute video documentary based on collaborative research conducted during the Patagonia Mosaics)