UI Logo link to UI home page CLAS link to College of Liberal Arts and Science home page
Home Faculty & Staff News Events Just Published Graduate Undergraduate
Courses Honors Diversity Resources Contact Us Support Us
Catherine Komisaruk

Latin America

Office: 224 SH

Tel: (319) 384-3284

Email: catherine-komisaruk@uiowa.edu

Research

Teaching

Publications

Awards &
Service

Research

Catherine Komisaruk joined the History Department in 2006. Her research interests are in the social and cultural history of colonial Latin America, particularly Mexico and Central America. Currently she is completing a book titled Labor and Love in Guatemala , 1760-1835: A Colony Unraveled. The book explores the ways that gradual transformations in labor forms, gender roles and family structures, and ethnic hierarchies prefigured Guatemala’s independence from Spain.

Before coming to Iowa, Catherine was an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach. She received the Ph.D. at UCLA in 2000. In her life before graduate study, she taught English and mathematics at the secondary level in Guatemala City.

Teaching

Catherine has taught undergraduate courses on the histories of Mexico, Cuba, Central America, and colonial Latin America; and graduate seminars in historiography. Her courses for 2007-08 include:

  • 16W:051 Colloquium for History Majors (World)
  • 16W:111 Colonial Latin America
  • 16W:106 Society and Revolution in Cuba
  • 16:288/35:247 Readings in Latin American History

Publications

  • Labor and Love in Guatemala, 1760-1835, under contract with Stanford University Press.
  • "Becoming Free, Becoming Ladino: Slave Emancipation and Mestizaje in Late Colonial Guatemala." In Between Race and Place: Blacks and Blackness in Central America , ed. Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming).
  • Co-editor with Kathleen McHugh, Something Other than Autobiography: Collaborative Life-Narratives in the Americas (anthology in progress).
  • "Juicios de violencia sexual en la Guatemala tardía colonial." In Los rostros de la violencia : Guatemala y El Salvador Siglos XVII y XIX , ed. Ana Margarita Gómez and Sajid Alfredo Herrera Mena (San Salvador: Editorial Universidad Centroamericana, 2007), 47-78.
  • "'The Work It Cost Me': Slaves and Free Africans in Guatemala, 1770-1825." Urban History Workshop Review 5 (1999): 4-24.
  • Co-editor with James W. Wilkie and José Guadalupe Ortega, Statistical Abstract of Latin America, volume 32 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1996).
  • Co-editor with James W. Wilkie and Carlos Alberto Contreras, Statistical Abstract of Latin America, volume 31 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1995).

Awards & Service

  • Member, UI American Indian and Native Studies Program Steering Committee.
  • Chair, Colonial Studies Committee of the Conference on Latin American History, 2008.
  • Old Gold Summer Fellowship, University of Iowa, 2007.
  • American Association of University Women American Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 2003-04.
  • University of California Humanities Research Institute Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 2001.
  • Honorary Student Marshal, UCLA Doctoral Commencement, 2001.
  • Chancellor’s Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA, 1998-99.
  • Paula Stone Dissertation Fellowship, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, 1998.
  • Constance Coiner Graduate Award, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, 1998.
  • UCLA International Studies and Overseas Programs Fieldwork Fellowship, 1997.
  • Mabel Wilson-Richards Scholarship, UCLA Graduate Division, 1996-97.
  • Social Science Research Council Dissertation Research Fellowship, 1996-97 (declined).
  • Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant, 1994.
  • University of California Pauley Fellowship, 1992-93 and 1995-96.
© The University of Iowa
2005. All rights reserved.		 Department of History, 280 Schaeffer Hall, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242. Tel: 319-335-2299. FAX: 319-335-2293.