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Dean John Coatsworth

John H. Coatsworth
Dean, School of International and Public Affairs; Interim Provost, Columbia University; Professor of International and Public Affairs and of History, Columbia University

International Affairs Building, Room 1414
Phone: 212-854-4604
jhc2125@columbia.edu

John H. Coatsworth is a leading scholar of Latin American economic and international history. Prior to his appointment as Dean in 2008, he served as a visiting professor at Columbia University (2006 – 2007) and Interim Dean of SIPA (2007 – 2008). He was appointed Interim Provost of the University on July 1, 2011.

Dean Coatsworth previously served as the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard University (1992 – 2007), and was founding director of Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. He also chaired the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies. Prior to his work at Harvard, Coatsworth was a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago (1969 – 1992). 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.

Dean Coatsworth 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 president of the Latin American Studies Association and former president of the American Historical Association. Coatsworth has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals including the American Historical Review, the Journal of Economic History, the Hispanic American Historical Review, and other social science and history journals published in Great Britain, Germany, Mexico, Peru, and Spain.

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

Dean Coatsworth received his BA in History from Wesleyan University, and his MA and PhD in Economic History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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 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. A selection of these include:

Some of the book chapters and encyclopedia entries include:.

  • "Cycles of Globalization, Economic Growth, and Human Welfare in Latin America," in Globalization and the Rural environment edited by Otto T. Solbrig, Robert Paarlberg, and Francesco di Castri ( David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, July 30, 2001).
  • “Political Economy and Economic Organization,” chapter 7, volume 1 of Cambridge Economic History of Latin America, edited by Victor Bulmer Thomas, John H. Coatsworth, and Roberto Cortes Conde (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 237-73; 541-45.
  • “Globalization, Growth, and Welfare in History” in Marcelo Suarez Orozco and Desiré Baolian Qin-Hilliard, eds., Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 38-55.
  • “Mexico” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History edited by Joel Mokyr (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 501-09.
  • "Cycles of Globalization, Economic Growth, and Human Welfare in Latin America" in Globalization and the Rural Environment edited by Otto T. Solbrig, Robert Paarlberg, and Francesco di Castri (Cambridge, MA: David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 23-47.
  • “Introduction to the Harvard Edition” of Stephen Kinser and Stephen Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. ix-xviii.
  • “The United States and Democracy in Mexico” in The United States and Latin America edited by James Dunkerley and Victor Bulmer-Thomas (London: University of London, Institute for Latin American Studies, 1999), pp. 141-55.