John Charles Chasteen
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Research Interests
Chasteen has always sought to understand and interpret, above all, the experience of the past. This historical enterprise has so far included studies of everything from armed insurgency to social dance, and it has lingered in many different parts of Latin America, especially Brazil, the Río de la Plata, and more recently, the Andes. In his research, Chasteen always asks "what it was like to be there," and in his writing he uses various narrative strategies to communicate the answer. Language and literature figure importantly in his life and in his work, as does a commitment to Latin American studies beyond a single country of interest. As a graduate teacher, he likes topics off the beaten path (which is where he finds his own), he is more the coach than the authority, and he pays special attention to writing technique. His current projects involve the Independence period, 1800-1825. A representative sample of his work would include: "Violence for Show: Knife Dueling on a Nineteenth-Century Cattle Frontier" (1990), "Fighting Words: The Discourse of Insurgency in Latin American History" (1993), Heroes on Horseback: A Life and Times of the Last Gaucho Caudillos (1995), "The Prehistory of Samba: Carnival Dancing in Rio de Janeiro, 1840-1917" (1996), Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America (2001), National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance (2003), and Americanos: Latin American Struggles for Independence (forthcoming), as well as a number of major translation and editing projects, including a documents reader on the Independence Period, currently in progress.
View a web version of Prof. Chasteen's curriculum vitae (in PDF).
Graduate Students Advised by John Chasteen
Courses Offered (as Schedules Allow)
For current course listings, consult the Directory of Classes.
- HIST 143 -- Latin America Since Independence
- HIST 533 -- History of Brazil
- HIST 714 -- Colloquium in Latin American History
- HIST 820 -- Problems in Latin American History
Contact
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Department of Histroy
CB #3195, Hamilton Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195
chasteen@email.unc.edu