American Studies Colloquium Series
November 14: Building a Hemispheric Empire. The United States in Latin America, 1898-1945
November 6, 2024
Join us for the opening lecture of the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2024/2025 Fall semester! Most historians agree that the US has played an imperial role in 20 th -century Latin America. However, what kind of empire was that? Was it based on dollars or bullets? Latin American elites and public opinion were passive actors within “empire’s workshop” or were actively “cooperating with the colossus”? Focusing on the first five decades of the 20 th -century, Marco Mariano argues that Washington built a hemispheric empire whose most distinctive feature was to be found in the material and immaterial infrastructures that enabled Washington to put in place what Paul Kramer defined an “international empire”.