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John D French, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, History

Contact Info:

Office Location:	223 Carr Building
Office Phone:	(919) 684-2536
Email Address:

Teaching (Spring 2010):

• HISTORY 170C.01, AFRO-BRAZIL CULTURE/HST Synopsis

  Friedl Bdg 107, TuTh 11:40 AM-12:55 PM

• HISTORY 340S.01, TOPICS IN MODERN LATIN AMERICA

  Carr 135, Th 06:00 PM-08:30 PM

Education:

PhD	Yale University	1985
MA	University of Pittsburgh	1978
BA (Magna cum laude)	Amherst College	1975

Specialties:

Latin America
Caribbean, Brazil
19th and 20th Centuries
Gender
Politics
African diaspora
Transnational
Women

Research Interests:

Current projects: Since 1984, I have been co-coordinator of the Latin American Labor History Conference held in April of each year at Duke, and I have served since 2001 as Director of the Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and since 2002 as Director of the Carolina and Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. I also serve as Associate Editor for Latin America and the Caribbean for the journal Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, under its new editor Leon Fink (University of Illinois-Chicago).

An historian of modern Latin America with a specialization in Brazil, my most recent book entitled Drowning in Laws: Labor Law and Brazilian Political Culture was published in 2004. I will be on a residential at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in AY 2005-2006 to finish a book on the origin of Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva entitled "Building Movements in a World in Flux: Leadership, Consciousness, and Mobilization among Metalworkers in São Paulo, Brazil 1950-1980." I have active ongoing research projects dealing with labor and globalization, as well as on "The Potential of Diasporic Dialogue: The Intersection of Afro-North America and Afro-Latin America in the Twentieth Century."

Keywords:

Latin America • Brazil • WTO

Curriculum Vitae

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. J.D. French, Question and Answer on comments by Brazilian President Lula at the International Labor Organization regarding labor, the G-20, and global crisis, Latin American Advisor [Inter-American Dialogue, Washington, DC) (August 24, 2009), pp. 4 [PDF]
2. J.D. French, Obama e o desafio pós-neoliberal [Obama and the Neo-Liberal Challenge], Teoria e Debate (São Paulo) no. 81 (April, 2009) [article.php] [PDF] [abs]
3. J.D. French, Understanding the Politics of Latin America’s Plural Lefts (Chávez/Lula): Social Democracy, Populism, and Convergence on the Path to a Post-Neoliberal World, Third World Quarterly, vol. 30 no. 2 (March, 2009), pp. 349-370 [01436590802681090]
4. J.D. French, Os Trabalhos Arquivísticos Voltado ao Mundo dos Trabalhadores: Avanços e Desafios em América Latina desde 1992, in O Mundo dos Trabalhadores e seus Arquivos, edited by José Antonio Marques & Inez Terezinha Stampa (2009), pp. 83-101, Arquivo Nacional/CUT [PDF]
5. J.D. French, Review of Richard Sandbrook, Marc Edelman, Patrick Heller, and Judith Teichman, Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, vol. 6 no. 3 (2009), pp. 120-22 [PDF]

I have received major fellowships from: Fulbright-Hays (1981-1982, 2000), Inter-American Foundation (1981-83), Social Science Research Council (1981-83, 1991) the National Humanities Center (1995-96), and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2005-2006). In addition, my external grants include: American Philosophical Society (1998), American Council of Learned Societies (1991), National Endowment for the Humanities (1998, 1991), National Historical Publications and Records Commission (1998-2000) and North-South Center (1994)