Department of History

Within the thematic and cross-national emphasis of the history doctorate at Stony Brook, Latin American history remains a thriving area concentration. Indeed, Stony Brook is recognized as one of the country’s top Ph.D. training centers in Latin American history. Since 1990, Stony Brook has awarded more than two dozen doctorates in this field, and Stony Brook students go onto important teaching posts across North America and Latin America. Our students have won an impressive share, both nationally and at Stony Brook, of international fellowships for their doctoral research, such as Fulbrights and SSRC grants. They also benefit from such programs as a Stony Brook-LACS Tinker Fellowship for overseas summer travel research.

The field centers around the leadership of internationally-renowned professors Brooke Larson and Paul Gootenberg, and Latin Americanists students also work with related scholars within the History Department, such as Roxborough, Anderson, Wilson, and Cronopoulos. The university is committed to further faculty appointments in Latin American history. Students also collaborate with distinguished Latin Americanist scholars in other fields such as Sociology, Hispanic Languages, and Music, integrated by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies center (LACS), which is located in the History Department. Stony Brook doctoral students can interact with counterparts from Columbia, N.Y.U. and other New York area institutions through activities of the New York City Workshop on Latin American History, which is currently hosted at Stony Brook-Manhattan. Students have ample opportunity for developing their teaching skills in summer and adjunct positions, and participate in an annual international Latin Americanist graduate conference organized by LACS.

A Stony Brook training in Latin American history excels in several ways. It is rooted in a vibrant and collegial community which brings together young working historians from Latin America itself–Peruvians, Argentines, Chileans, and others–with their peers from North America. Moreover, each student, regardless of their country or topical specialization, develops a close-knit mentoring relationship with each of our professors, who emphasize comparative, methodological, and interpretative skills in the development of new and critical perspectives on Latin American history.