History of Latin America & the Caribbean; The Atlantic World; Imperialism and Colonialism; Political History; Transnational History
Latin America and Caribbean / Gulf region; expatriates and exiles; Pan-Americanism, Hispanism and Americanismo
I am currently working on two book projects. The first, currently titled “Cultures of Circulation, Traditions of Subversion: The Making of the Gulf World in the Americas,” will give substance and weight to the framework of the Gulf World, which I develop in my first book. Here I make the case that If we focus not just on the trade and transportation networks that linked the space between what is now Mexico, Cuba and the United States, but on the movement, migrations and circulations of the diverse travelers who crisscrossed the Gulf of Mexico legally and illegally in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it becomes evident that the the Gulf, while connected to a greater Caribbean and even greater Atlantic and Pacific spheres, became a world unto itself. This book offers readers and scholars a new conceptualization of the region rooted in the case studies of travelers who subverted authority as they laid claim to and shaped the Gulf World through their movements and migrations over three centuries.
The second book project is titled “The Boundaries and the Bonds of Cuban Citizenship During a Time of Transition.” This book is a study of citizenship in Cuba during the first U.S. occupation and the early republic. On one hand, I explore the struggles of migrants stranded abroad after the Cuban independence war who were denied rights and protections that they should have enjoyed as Cuban citizens. On the other hand, I examine the struggles of self- identified Africans in Cuba who resisted membership in the Cuban nation, but were forced to accept Cuban citizenship.
Articles
"The Gulf World and Other Frameworks," The American Historian, 16 (May 2018), 16-23
“Latin America and the Question of Cuban Independence,” The Americas, 68:2, October 2011: 209-239.