Mark Overmyer-Velazquez
Dean and Chief Administrative Officer, UConn Hartford
Professor, History, Latino and Latin American Studies
Primary Research Theme
Research Interests
Starting with an early literature review, “Tracking the Fugitive City: Recent Works on Modern Latin American Urban History” (Latin American Perspectives, 2002), my scholarship has continued to focus on urban themes. My first book, Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico(Duke, 2006) analyzes how elites (city officials and Church leaders) and commoners (city artisans and female sex workers) mobilized visual cultures to construct and experience the mutually defining processes of modernity and tradition during early 20th century Mexico. I further explore historical urban dynamics in the border cities of El Paso/Ciudad Juarez in “Good Neighbors and White Mexicans: Constructing Race and Nation on the Mexico-US Border” (Journal of American Ethnic History, 2013). My recent work “Out of the Fires: Peruvian Migrants in Post Pinochet Chile” (Oxford, 2017) examines Chile’s recent wave of Peruvian immigration in the context of the country’s “democratic opening” following the end of Pinochet’s military dictatorship when large numbers of Peruvian migrants began crossing the country’s narrow northern border in search of work primarily in the capital, Santiago.
Recent Cities-related Projects
- Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006 [2nd edition 2011]
- “Out of the Fires: Peruvian Migrants in Post Pinochet Chile” in Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, co-ed., Global Latin(o) Americanos: Transoceanic Diasporas and Regional Migrations. New York: Oxford University Press (History of the Americas Series), 2017
- “Good Neighbors and White Mexicans: Constructing Race and Nation on the Mexico-US Border” Journal of American Ethnic History (University of Illinois Press), Fall 2013, Vol. 33, No. 1, 5-34.
Selected Urban-Related Publications
Editor, Construyendo el Gran México: La emigración a Estado Unidos. Mexico City: Editorial del Colegio de San Luis; de la Frontera del Norte, in production. [Spanish translation of Beyond la Frontera, revised and expanded edition]
Co-editor/author, Global Latin(o) Americanos: Transoceanic Diasporas and Regional Migrations. New York: Oxford University Press (History of the Americas Series), 2017.
