Research Interests

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara is interested in the intellectual and cultural history of the Iberian world, with particular emphasis on Spain, the Caribbean, Brazil, and the U.S. Southwest. He is the author of The Conquest of History: Spanish Colonialism and National Histories in the Nineteenth Century (Pittsburgh, 2006, paperback ed. 2008). He is the co-editor with Dr. John Nieto Phillips (Indiana University) of Interpreting Spanish Colonialism: Empires, Nations, and Legends (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).
Currently, he is at work on two studies. The first is a book entitled Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America to be published in the Diálogos Series by the University of New Mexico Press. The second is a new undertaking tentatively entitled The Blanco Whites in a World of Empires, 1800-1850. It is a study of the remarkable Spanish intellectual Joseph Blanco White and his family, particularly his brother Fernando and his son Ferdinand, and how their lives were shaped by the rise and fall of European empires in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Dr. Schmidt-Nowara is on the board of editors of two journals, Social History and Illes i Imperis/Islands and Empires, and is one of the editors of the new series entitled “Atlantic Crossings” at the University of Alabama Press.
Among his regular course offerings at Fordham are classes on Spanish and Caribbean history and a graduate course on slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world. He has also been a visitor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras (2003) and the Universidade de São Paulo (2007), where he taught graduate courses in Caribbean history.

From 2003 to 2006, Dr. Schmidt-Nowara was Director of Fordham’s Latin American & Latino Studies Institute (LALSI). He encourages students interested in graduate studies in Latin America and Spanish history to look also at graduate offerings through LALSI: www.fordham.edu/lalsi.

Select Publications

Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1874. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

“Imperio y crisis colonial.” Más se perdió en Cuba: España, 1898 y la crisis de fin de siglo. Ed. Juan Pan-Montojo. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1998. 2nd ed. 2006.
“Spanish Origins of American Empire: Hispanism, History, and Commemoration, 1898-1915.” International History Review, forthcoming.

“From Columbus to Ponce de León, 1893-1908: Puerto Rican Commemorations between
Empires.” Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of a Modern American State. Eds. Alfred McCoy and Francisco Scarano. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming.

“Empires against Emancipation: Spain, Brazil, and the Abolition of Slavery.” Review: Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, forthcoming.

Links

Fordham University and Cuban Baseball in the Nineteenth Century:
http://www.library.fordham.edu/cubanbaseball/Main.html