Karin Rosemblatt

Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt is a historian of twentieth-century Latin America. She is interested in the transnational study of gender, race, ethnicity, and class and their relation to policymaking. Rosemblatt’s most recent book is The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910-1950 (2018). In this book, she traces the history of the social and human sciences in Mexico and the United States, revealing intricate connections among the development of science, the concept of race, and policies toward indigenous peoples. This book was awarded the 2019 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers in the North American/US History category. Rosemblatt is also coeditor of an anthology on Race and Nation in Modern Latin America (2003). Her first book was Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920-1950 (2000). This book examined how feminists, socialists, labor activists, social workers, physicians, and political leaders converged around a shared gender ideology and how that ideology shaped labor, health, and welfare policies. The book won the Berkshire Prize for the best first book by a woman historian, awarded by the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians.

Rosemblatt is the principal investigator for a five-year National Science Foundation grant aimed at promoting and coordinating research on the histories of science, technology, environment, medicine, and other knowledge practices in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Red de Estudios de las Ciencias y los Saberes en Latinoamérica y el Caribe (RECSLAC, Network for the Study of Sciences and Knowledges in Latin America and the Caribbean) sponsors pedagogy workshops, conferences, and workshops for graduate students. It is building a website. 

Rosemblatt serves on the Board of Editors of the Journal of Women’s History. She has held fellowships from Fulbright and the National Endowment for Humanities and been a fellow at New York University and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Scholar Award for her work on race.

From 1995 to 2008, she taught at Syracuse University. She served as Director of Latin American Studies at Maryland from 2008 to 2013 and as Director of the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies, 2019 to 2023.

Karin Rosemblatt is the author of several prize-winning publications:

Books

The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910-1950 (2018)  2019 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers in the North American/US History category

Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920-1950 (2000) Berkshire Prize, best first book by a woman historian,Berkshire Conference of Women Historians

Articles

"Modernization, Dependency, and the Global in Mexican Critiques of Anthropology, 1945-1970," Journal of Global History 9, no. 1 (March 2014): 94-121 Biennial best article prize, Forum for the History of the Human Sciences

"Other Americas: Transnationalism, the Culture of Poverty, and the Politics of Scholarship in Mexico and the United States." Hispanic American Historical Review 89, no. 4 (November 2009): 603-41 Honorable mention, best article prize, American Sociological Association, Section on the Political Economy of the World System

She is the author of many articles, including:

"Bodies, Environments, and Race: Roots and Branches of Eugenic Nationalism in the Long Twentieth Century" in Handbook of the Historiography of Latin American Studies on the Life Sciences and Medicine, Ana Barahona, ed. (Cham: Springer, 2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48616-7_31-1

 "Modernization, Dependency, and the Global in Mexican Critiques of Anthropology, 1945-1970," Journal of Global History 9, no. 1 (March 2014): 94-121.

 "Welfare States, Neoliberal Regimes, and International Political Economy: The Gender Politics of Latin America in Global Context," Journal of Women’s History 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 149-62.

 "Other Americas: Transnationalism, the Culture of Poverty, and the Politics of Scholarship in Mexico and the United States." Hispanic American Historical Review 89, no. 4 (November 2009): 603-41. Honorable mention, best article prize, American Sociological Association, Section on the Political Economy of the World System

 "Sexuality and Biopower in Chile and Latin America." Political Power and Social Theory 15 (2001): 315-72.

 "Charity, Rights, Entitlement: Labor Politics and Welfare for Workers in Popular-Front Chile." Hispanic American Historical Review 81, nos. 3-4 (November 2001): 555-86.

 "'What We Can Reclaim of the Old Values of the Past': Sexual Morality and Politics in Twentieth-Century Chile." Comparative Studies in Society and History 43, no. 1 (January 2001): 149-80.

 "Por un hogar bien constituido: El Estado y su política familiar en los frentes populares" in Disciplina y desacato: Construcción de identidad en Chile, siglos XIX y XX, edited by Lorena Godoy, Elizabeth Hutchison, Karin Rosemblatt, and M. Soledad Zárate.