SIPA: School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University

SIPA Faculty

John H. Coatsworth
International Affairs Building, Room 1414
Dean, School of International and Public Affairs; Professor of International and Public Affairs and of History, Columbia University
Phone: 212-854-4604
jhc2125@columbia.edu

Biography:
John Coatsworth is the author or editor of seven books and many scholarly articles on Latin American economic and international history. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Directors of the Tinker Foundation, and numerous professional associations. He is a former president of the American Historical Association and was recently elected to the presidency of the Latin American Studies Association. He came to Columbia as a visiting professor in 2006-07 and joined the faculty in 2007. He became Acting Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs in 2007.

Dean Coatsworth received his BA degree in History from Wesleyan University (1963) and his MA (1967) and Ph.D. (1972) degrees in Economic History from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1969 until he joined the Harvard faculty in 1992. From 1992 until 2007, he was Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard, where he also served as the founding director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies from its creation in 1994 until 2006. He also chaired the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies. His other academic posts have included visiting professorships at El Colegio de México, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the National University of Buenos Aires, the Instituto Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, and the Instituto Ortega y Gassett in Madrid. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals including the American Historical Review, the Journal of Economic History, and the Hispanic American Historical Review and as well as social science and history journals published in Britain, Germany, Mexico, Peru, and Spain.

Dean Coatsworth was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1986, served as Senior Fulbright Lecturer three times (for appointments in Argentina and Mexico), and has received research and institutional grants from public agencies and private foundations in the United States and elsewhere. He has also acted as consultant for program design or review to numerous U.S. universities and private foundations.

Research Interests: Economic History, Latin America, Mexico

Publications:

Dean Coatsworth's most recent book is The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America (2 vols., Cambridge University Press, 2006), edited with Victor Bulmer-Thomas and Roberto Cortes Conde. His research and publications have focused on comparative economic, social, and international history of Latin America, especially Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Other recent books include The United States and Central America: The Clients and the Colossus (New York: Twayne, 1994); Latin America and the World Economy Since 1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), edited with Alan M. Taylor; Culturas Encontradas: Cuba y los Estados Unidos edited with Rafael Hernandez and published jointly by the Harvard's David Rockefeller Center and Cuba's Juan Marinello Center in 2001. Coatsworth's books on Mexico include Los origenes del atraso: Nueve ensayos de historia economica de Mexico, siglos xviii y xix (Origins of Backwardness: Nine Essays on Mexican Economic History, 18th and 19th Centuries), published in Spanish by Alianza Editorial Mexicana in 1990; Images of Mexico in the United States, co-edited with Carlos Rico, a collection of essays commissioned by the Bilateral Commission on the Future of Mexican-United States Relations in 1988; and Growth Against Development: The Economic Impact of Railroads in Porfirian Mexico (1976). He has published numerous scholarly articles and essays.