University Recommendation

[Pechorin]

Hi everybody,

I was hoping some of you could recommend some 2nd/3rd tier universities that have a good latin american history program (cold war period). Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

[rising_star]

MA or PhD? Why only second or third tier schools?

[Pechorin]

Thanks for the reply,

I was hoping to get some recommendations for some safety schools that have a good Latin American History PhD program (Modern History). Ideally, I would like to be accepted into a university such as Columbia, but it is probably wise to have a plan B. I have found it rather difficult finding good programs since most schools, and even some of the big names, focus primarily on Mexico and Brazil, but less on the rest of the region. I rather skip the M.A. since I already did a masters in another field and I am quite sure regarding what I want to study.

[TMP]

Your MA will give you a bit of boost in your application, so I wouldn't worry.

Perhaps you can speak with those profs in top programs, pitch your idea and see what they say. It's true that they're pretty picky about what countries you want to study in. I'm being encouraged as well to look at Latin Americanists since my interests can cover Latin America and I have Spanish. I just think, "Countries? I don't even know... I'll work with you whatever so as long I can do my project!" Although, Ideally, I'd like to do Argentina and/or Chile if I ever make it there.

Either way, they can provide very good recommendations for you. They'll be eager to help you fit the right fit, especially for an understudied field like Latin America.

Where IS StrangeLight? She applied for Latin America last year... find her posts, she's got some pretty good insights on what she's learned in her process.

[misterpat]

I know nothing about your field. What I do know that Robert Smale of University of Missouri (ranked in the 50s) is excellent and focuses on Bolivia. Don't know if that helps any. Good luck.

[thepoorstockinger]

University of Alberta if you're willing to go North.

[StrangeLight]

i am here. hopefully i can be of some help.

"cold war period" is extremely vague. most latin americanists tend to break down their interests by country/sub-region and either colonial or postcolonial. the only person who immediately comes to mind that does latin american cold war history in particular is greg grandin at NYU (but he, too, began as someone that did postcolonial guatemala more specifically). greg is fantastic, but he's highly sought after and very busy and i certainly wouldn't put him or NYU in the 2nd or 3rd tier.

i think you'll find with latin american history programs, the top programs for our subfield are rarely in "the top 10 schools" for history programs more broadly. michigan, wisconsin, indiana, and yale all have great latin american history programs as well as top general history ranking, but this is the exception. i understand you're looking for "safety schools," but as you rightly noted, a lot of the top-ranked schools focus primarily on mexico and brazil (columbia, chicago), so if you want to study outside of the "big three" (mexico, brazil, cuba, in that order), you're going to have to look to schools in the 10-50 range anyway.

it's hard to give you too many recommendations without knowing what country or at least what region (andes, southern cone, caribbean, central america, etc) you want to study.

i'm at the university of pittsburgh right now and so far, so good. we've got one of the top brazilianists, one of the top cubanists, one of the top central americanists. latin america and atlantic history are particularly strong here and (i hope no one reads this) there is the feeling within the department that while our program does these two things EXTREMELY well (with grad students in these fields getting tenure-track positions at research universities), we're not so strong outside of those two fields. almost anywhere that you look to study something outside of mexico or brazil, you'll likely find yourself in a department that is really good at one or two things but not across the board.

the "no brainers" for latin american history are: yale, indiana-bloomington, michigan-ann arbor (though, admittedly, they are stronger on the caribbean than other regions), unc-chapel hill, wisconsin-madison, chicago (again, brazil, mexico, and the english caribbean only), nyu, texas-austin. i'm sure i'm leaving others off.

the "good for certain regions" schools: pitt (particularly if you do race/class/gender and brazil or the caribbean), tulane (central america), miami (the caribbean especially... a young/rebuilding program, and so certainly a "safety" from your POV, but still an excellent school to wind up at), iowa, rutgers.

i left a lot of UC schools off my list because of california's budget problems. berkeley's another one of those mexico/brazil schools. ucla has a little more variety. stanford is an andes/mexico school too, i think.

if you can narrow down your interests to a subregion i can probably help you a little more, but as i said, most professors don't define their work as continent-wide but temporally constrained.

[Pechorin]

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your replies. The area I am most interested in is the andean region/souther cone (especially chile) during the cold war. I have researched a bit on most of the schools suggested here. Madison seems to be quite strong in my area of interest but hopefully some one can recommend me another school. I did see in some of the university websites that many professors take graduate students who do not necessarily want to specialize in what they do. But I imagine it must be better for the students to work with someone who is an expert in what the student wants to do.

[StrangeLight]

it varies by professor whether or not they take on someone outside of their own specialty. i think you'll find that a lot of the "big name" professors are resistant to working outside of their specialty, which is fine, because that's certainly their prerogative. they've earned it by becoming that big name. i'd just recommend that you email professors you're thinking of working with and asking them if they're interested or capable of advising your project. i crossed off quite a few schools on my list by doing that, and i think that's a good thing. i saved myself time and money.

jeremy adelman at princeton does argentina, economics. not sure about cold war in particular.

irene silverblatt at duke does peru, state formation, race. i think she may focus on late colonial/early postcolonial but it's worth looking into.

john charles chasteen at UNC does popular and political culture of brazil and the andes. he also wrote a MASSIVE book called contemporary latin america. i'm reading it this week, so we'll see how i feel about him in a bit. ha!

nara milanich at columbia does chile. jose moya is there too doing argentina, globalization, migration, and labour.

raymond craib at cornell does modern chile. they just lost mary roldan (colombia), so i don't know how big their latin american grad program is anymore.

mark healey at berkeley does modern argentina, urban, architecture.

florenica mallon at wisconsin does chile, peru, etc. you already know this.

barbara weinstein at NYU does brazil but could probably advise you on the andes or the southern cone. she's fantastic. plus, greg grandin's there and he could meet all your "cold war" needs too.

reid andrews at pittsburgh does "brazil" but he started with argentina, is currently working on uruguay, and wrapped up a book on all of latin america (well, afro-latin america) a few years ago. nineteenth and twentieth century, race.

mark thurner at the university of florida does postcolonial andes. i'm not really familiar with his stuff, but he seems like the best "fit" so far. jeff neddell does modern brazil at U of F too.

florida international university's a good place for latin america too. mark szuchman and victor uribe may have the regional interest, not sure about cold war.

christine hunefeldt at UC san diego does gender and race in the andes. michael monteon does political and economic history in argentina, chile, and mexico (this is probably another good fit).

fordham has hector lindo fuentes who does US-latin american relations and elizabeth penry who does andean ethno-history.

james prennan at UC riverside does 20th century argentina, brazil, chile, urban and labour history.

nils jacobsen at university of illinois urbana does 20th century peru.

UCLA has jose moya listed there too. so i'm not sure which school he's at. william summerhill at UCLA works on the southern cone.

elizabeth hutchison at the university of new mexico works on southern cone, gender, labour.

temma kaplan at rutgers does gender, sexuality, and revolution in argentina and chile.

that's all i know of, but that is by no means everyone. i really only looked at schools that had someone on staff who did central america or the caribbean. i didn't see much in the way of people for you to work with at chicago, michigan, or austin, but have a look for yourself and consider writing to one of the professors to see if they'd be interested in working outside their field with you.

good luck! (and yes, i had all this information on a spreadsheet. i don't know any of this off the top of my head).