Marc Adam Hertzman

I study the history of Brazil and Latin America with special interest in race, culture, slavery, labor, and gender. While most of my previous work has focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, my most recent project is rooted in the colonial era, where I explore the afterlives and cultural, spiritual, physical, and monetary inheritances of Palmares, one of history’s largest and longest-standing fugitive slave settlements, and its iconic leader, Zumbi. The book, After Palmares: Diaspora, Inheritance, and the Afterlives of Zumbi, published in 2024 in Duke University Press's Radical Perspectives Series, builds on my longstanding interest in race and the legacies of slavery, while deepening and broadening my engagement with the history and scholarship of Africa and its diaspora. 

My first book, Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil, was published by Duke University Press in 2013 and awarded Honorable Mention for the Bryce Wood Book Prize (Latin American Studies Association) and the Woody Guthrie Award (International Association for the Study of Popular Music). In 2020, I published a second book about Gilberto Gil's genre-defying album Refazenda with Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 Series.

My work has also appeared in scholarly venues such as Comparative Studies in Society and History, American Historical Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, Luso-Brazilian Review, A Contracorriente, Journal of Latin American Studies, and in edited volumes published in the U.S. and Brazil.

I believe in the value of engaged scholarship. Towards that end, I have written in venues such as New York Magazine, Time, RebootIllinois, Notches, and Public Seminar, and have appeared on Al-Jazeera to provide commentary and news analysis about Brazil. I also prioritize exchange and collaboration with scholars in Latin America and am proud to have co-authored with Brazilian scholars several pieces, including an essay about race, gender, and monuments and an animated short about Palmares for TED-Ed.

Before coming to Illinois I was Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University and then Assistant Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies and Director of the Center for Brazilian Studies at Columbia University.

Students, sign up for office hours here.

B.A. Washington University (MO) (Magna Cum Laude, 2000); Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison (2008)

2025 American Historical Association James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History for After Palmares

2025 Honorable Mention, Latin American Studies Association Brazil Section Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Prize for After Palmares

2025 Honorable Mention, Conference on Latin American History Warren Dean Memorial Prize for After Palmares

2025 Honorable Mention, Latin America & Caribbean Section of the Southern Historical Association Murdo J. MacLeod Book Prize for After Palmares

2024 Honorable Mention, Conference on Latin American History James Alexander Robertson Prize for "The 'Indians of Palmares'"
2024 Honorable Mention, Latin American Studies Brazil Section Prize for "The 'Indians of Palmares'"
2023 Brazilian Studies Association Best Article Prize for "Making Their Own Mahatma"
2022 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Stipend
2022 Center for Advanced Study (UIUC) Associate                      
2017-2022  Conrad Humanities Scholar
2018 Vanderwood Prize for "Fatal Differences"                                        
2018 Kimberly S. Hanger Article Prize for "Fatal Differences"
2014 Honorable Mention, Bryce Wood Book Prize for Making Samba
2014 Honorable Mention, Woody Guthrie Award for Making Samba
2009 New England Council of Latin American Studies Best Dissertation Prize
2004 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

446H Gregory Hall
810 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL 61801

(217) 300-7602