BROOKE LARSON
Professor |
PhD, Columbia University, 1978 |
Read Dr. Brooke Larson's CV |
Interests: Colonial and postcolonial Bolivian Andes, peasant movements, race, indigeneity,
and rural education
Bio:
My research and graduate teaching fields encompass five centuries of colonial and modern history, with a regional focus on the Andes. My early research (Cochabamba, 1550-1900) provided a sweeping overview of Spanish colonialism and social transformations in the valleys of Cochabamba, with an eye on the adaptive vitality of Andean peasant society in the late 18 th century. That work (as well as my co-edited book, Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration) became part of a transnational interdisciplinary effort in the 1980s and = 1990s to reshape the dynamic field of Andean Studies. A third book, Trials of Nation Making, took a wider comparative approach to the postcolonial problems and possibilities of nation-making in the Andean republics of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia during the 19 th century. My 2024 book, The Lettered Indian, is an ethnographic history of the epic battle over indigenous education and its implications for Bolivian nation-building projects and the contested meanings of race and citizenship over the 20 th century. At Stony Brook, where I helped found the Latin American Caribbean Center, I taught an array of graduate seminars and undergraduate courses, including Colonial Latin America, Race and Nation, European/Indian encounters, and Comparative Frontiers.
Select Works:
"Capturing Indian Bodies, Hearths, and Minds: Gendered Politics of Rural School Reform in Bolivia, 1920s–1940s." Read the chapter.
"Democratic Progress or Peril? Indigenous and Popular Mobilization in Bolivia." Read the chapter.
"Revisiting Bolivian Studies: Reflections on Theory, Scholarship, and Activism since 1980." Read the article.