Christine Mathias
I am a third year graduate student focusing on Latin American History and Comparative Frontiers and Borderlands. My dissertation examines the conquest of the Chaco, a lowlands region stretching across Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay, over a period bookended by two of South America’s most destructive wars: the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) and the Chaco War (1932-1935). I am interested in how international rivalries and border disputes affected indigenous groups, and how the colonization policies of other settler colonial states shaped the decisions of Argentine leaders. Previous research projects focused on anti-Chinese movements in the copper-mining enclave of Cananea, just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, and the nineteenth-century Mexican investments of gun-maker Samuel Colt. I speak Spanish, French, Portuguese, and very elementary Chinese.
In 2011-2012, I will serve as a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina and an international dissertation research fellow of the Social Science Research Council. My advisors are Gilbert M. Joseph, Stuart B. Schwartz, and John Mack Faragher. Please email me with any questions.
