José Antonio De Gracia
I am interested in the contact zones of empire in Latin America. Broadly, I study the contestation of power, the ambiguity of imperial spaces, and the consequences of foreign-local encounters. More specifically, I explore the ways in which people in Panama challenged, negotiated, and/or supported U.S. intervention, and how those unequal and complex exchanges shaped Panamanian politics, society, and urban environments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Before enrolling at Pitt in Fall 2023, I received my BA in Architecture from Isthmus: Escuela de Arquitectura y Diseño (Panama City, Panama) and my MA in Urban Design from the Universitat de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain). In 2021, I was awarded a position as a Visiting Researcher at Panama’s Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Antropológicas y Culturales. I conducted independent research on the intersection between the construction of urban infrastructures and the dominant social ideologies in Panama during the era of the French Canal. I argued that the production of new urban spaces by the end of the nineteenth century reflected Eurocentric notions of cosmopolitanism that excluded many of the ethnically and racially diverse groups of Panama City.
Advisor: Michel Gobat
Fields: Latin American History, U.S.-Latin America Relations, Empire, Built Environment
Fellowships and Awards:
Latin American Social and Public Policy Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh (2023–2024)
Research Fellowship, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Antropológicas y Culturales (2021–2022)