Cynthia Radding

 







Gussenhoven Distinguished Professor of Latin American Studies
and Professor of History
B.A. Smith College, 1968
M.A. University of California-Berkeley, 1970
Ph.D. University of California-San Diego, 1990

Research Interests

Cynthia Radding joined the faculty of the History Department and the affiliated faculty of the Institute for the Study of the Americas in July 2008. Beginning in fall semester 2008, Dr. Radding teaches courses in colonial Latin America, Latin American environmental history, and history of Mexico. She will develop an interdisciplinary capstone course for the Latin American Studies program, to be taught for the first time in Spring 2009.

Cynthia Radding’s research and teaching focus on Iberoamerican frontiers during the colonial and early national periods, with special emphasis on northern Mexico and the internal lowland frontiers of Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay. Her work seeks to contribute to the intersection of environmental, social, and cultural history and to the interdisciplinary methodologies of ethnohistory. Dr. Radding’s current research project, entitled “The Shadow of Empire: Ecology, History, and Culture in Comparative Colonial Frontiers,” brings together related themes concerning ethnic identity, cultivated landscapes, and migratory pathways in the three major corridors of northwestern, north central, and northeastern New Spain.

Dr. Radding’s career spans a number of teaching and research positions in Mexico and the United States. She began her work with the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), and she has taught at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Most recently, Dr. Radding was Director of the Latin American and Iberian Institute and Professor of History at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Cynthia Radding has served on the editorial boards of The Americas and Hispanic American Historical Review. She currently serves on the organizing committee for the XIII Reunión de Historiadores Mexicanos, Estadounidenses y Canadieneses (2010). In 2007, she was appointed to the Advisory Council for the Inter-American Foundation Board.

Cynthia Radding’s recent book-length publications include: Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers. Northwestern Mexico, 1700-1850 (Duke University Press, 1997) and Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic (Duke University Press, 2005). Wandering Peoples was awarded the American Society for Ethnohistory Erminie Wheeler-Vogel Prize in 1998, and Landscapes of Power and Identity was published in Spanish by the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia (ABNB, 2005). In addition, Radding published Entre el desierto y la sierra. Las naciones o'odham y tegüima de Sonora, 1530-1840 (Mexico, CIESAS, INI, 1995) in the series Historia de los pueblos indígenas de México.

Dr. Radding has published numerous articles and chapters in Hispanic American Historical Review, The Americas, and Latin American Research Review as well as in academic journals and edited volumes in Mexico, Europe, and Bolivia. She works collaboratively with the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Atzcapotzalco, the Colegio de Sonora and INAH in Mexico as well as with the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales and several nongovernmental organizations in Bolivia, whose work is dedicated to art, culture, and the defense of indigenous rights.