Latino History: An Interchange on Present Realities and Future Prospects

In her 2006 Organization of American Historians (oah) presidential address, Vicki Ruiz invoked José Martí's landmark 1891 essay “Nuestra América” in calling for a more comprehensive, transhemispheric vision of the U.S. past, one that understands “Latino history as United States history.” For more than four decades, scholars have written about U.S. Latina and Latino experiences, often under the rubric of Mexican American or Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, or immigration history. Recent scholarship, especially, has embraced such a transhemispheric vision.

Inspired in large part by Ruiz's address, this interchange engages ten scholars in a conversation about ways they conceptualize, research, and teach Latino history within national and transnational narratives. We are honored to have such a distinguished group of scholars whose work in and out of the classroom reflects the dynamism and meaning of Latino history as U.S. history.