| Selected Publications |
Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America.
Sueann Caulfield, Sarah Chambers, and Lara Putnam, eds. (Duke
University Press, 2005)
The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender
in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870–1960 (University of
North Carolina Press, 2002)
“Contact Zones: Heterogeneity and Boundaries in Caribbean Central America at the Start of the Twentieth Century,” Iberoamericana [Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin] 6, no. 23 (setiembre 2006): 113-125.
“To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World,” Journal of Social History 39, no. 3 (Spring 2006).
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| Honors/Awards
|
ACLS Fellowship (2006)
Two-year research grant. Central Research Development Fund,
University of Pittsburgh (2004-2006).
Central America Fellowship. David Rockefeller Center for
Latin American Studies, Harvard University (2001)
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| Project(s) |
“Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the
Jazz Age.” This book, available January 2012 from UNC Press, reconstructs the making of a circum-Caribbean migratory sphere at the dawn of the twentieth century and then details the harsh fracturing of that interconnected world by new race-based anti-immigrant bans in the interwar era. As working-class men and women of the Greater Caribbean tried to make sense of the perils and promise of this modern moment, they created ideas, music, and moves that would be globally influential. The popular cultures of black internationalism generated in this time and place range from Marcus Garvey's U.N.I.A. to "regge" dances, Rastafarianism, and the international fandom of Joe Louis. Facing unprecedented hostility in receiving societies from Venezuela
to the United States, Afro-Caribbean migrants re-thought allegiances of race, class, and empire. Ranging from rumors of black magic to vernacular dance in the Age of Jazz, this book travels from the villages of Trinidad to the wharves of Panama to the streets of Harlem to uncover the forgotten routes through which new nationalisms and
transnationalisms were forged by the men and women of the Greater Caribbean.
"The Problem of Youth at the End
of Empire: State Racism, Civil Society, and Policies toward
British Caribbean Youth at Home and Abroad, 1900-1970".
This study aims first to describe the historical development
of public policies impacting British Caribbean youth, focusing
on the ways changing ideas about "race," "national
character," and "cultural psychology" shaped
social policy; and then to measure the impact of those policies
as actually implemented. By comparing outcomes among the grandchildren
of British West Indian migrants in Jamaica, Costa Rica, Panama,
Barbados, and Trinidad, I take advantage of a natural experiment
that allows me to test the hypothesis that migrants' cultural
heritage determines success among immigrant youth. My results
demonstrate the plasticity of youth cultures, and suggest
that public investment in education-even when undertaken by
a xenophobic state-can open real opportunities for immigrant
advance.
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