Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, PhD

University Director of UConn Hartford, Professor of History and Latino and Latin American Studies

University Director of UConn Hartford, Professor of History and Latino and Latin American Studies
University of Connecticut
Email Mark.Velazquez@uconn.edu

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Areas of Expertise:

  • Modern Mexico
  • U.S. Latinos/as

Mark Overmyer‐Velázquez is University Director of UConn Hartford and Professor of History and Latino and Latin American Studies at the University of Connecticut. He trained at Yale University as a historian of Latin America and U.S. Latinos and has dedicated his research and teaching to these intersecting fields. He completed his book, Beyond la Frontera: The History of Mexico‐U.S. Migration (Oxford, 2011), while on fellowship as the Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. His latest book analyzes the historical experiences of people from Latin America and the Caribbean in their hemispheric and global diasporas. Global Latin(o) Americanos: Transoceanic Diasporas and Regional Migrations (Oxford, 2017), emerges from his work as a Fulbright Scholar examining the history of Peruvian migrants in Chile. Winner of the New England Council on Latin American Studies Best Book Award, his first work, Visions of the

Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico (Duke, 2006; Spanish translation 2010), 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 late 19th and early 20th century Mexico. Former co‐chair of the Latina/o Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association, he also edited the two volume, Latino America: State by State (Greenwood, 2008), which addresses the historical significance of the growing Latin(o) American population throughout the United States.