Catherine C. LeGrand
PhD (Stanford)
Monday 14:30 - 16:00 & by appointment
I did an M.A. in Latin American Studies and Ph.D. in Latin American History at Stanford University and then taught at the University of British Columbia (1980-85), Queen’s University (1985-90), and McGill University (1990-present). My research focuses on the agrarian, social and cultural history of Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries and cultural aspects of US and Canadian relations with Latin America. I have written on the impact of agricultural export economies (coffee, bananas, and sugar) on land tenure and social relations in frontier areas and on rural conflict. I’ve also published on the historiography of foreign enclaves in Latin America, the B.C. Sugar Company in the Dominican Republic, law and citizenship in Colombia, the Colombian Violencia of the 1950s, and the current conflict in Colombia. Presently I am studying Catholic connections between Canada and Latin America: Quebec missionaries in Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Bolivia and Nova Scotia’s Antigonish Movement in Latin America (1935-1980), with special focus on the impact of Liberation Theology, and links between progressive Catholicism and approaches to development. I have served as president of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and as Associate Editor (History) of the Latin American Research Review.
Latin American and Spanish Caribbean history of the 19th and 20th centuries; social and cultural history (as they relate to political and economic themes); transnational history; rural history; social movements.
I teach the survey of modern Latin American history (HIST. 360) as well as “Race in Latin America” (HIST. 197), “Historical Roots of the Crisis of the 1980s in Central America” (HIST. 419) , “Latin American Relations with the United States and Canada: Transnational Perspectives” (HIST. 409), and “New Approaches to Latin American Social and Cultural History” (HIST. 464D/614D).
Publications:
Book:
Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1850-1936 (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1986) 302 pp. Spanish translation: Colonización y Protesta Campesina en Colombia (1850-1950) (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional, 1988). Re-published by Ediciones Uniandes, with a prologue by Francisco Gutiérrez, Bogotá, 2016.
Edited Book:
Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, co-edited with Gilbert M. Joseph and Ricardo D. Salvatore (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998). 575 pp.
Edited Journal:
"Land, Justice, and Memory: Challenges for Peace in Colombia." Special Issue of Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Co-edited with Luis van Isschot and Pilar Riano-Alcala. Vol. 42, Issue 3 (November 2017).
Articles: (Note: (Articles published in Spanish or French are available in the original English; please communicate directly with the author at catherine.legrand@mcgill.ca)
(with Pilar Riano-Alcala and Luis van Isschot). "Introduction: Land, Justice, and Memory: Challenges for Peace in Colombia." Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 42:3 (2017): 259-276
(With Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens), “Canadian and U.S. Catholic Promotion of Co-operatives in Central America and the Caribbean and their Political Implications,” in A Global History of Consumer Co-operation since 1850: Movements and Businesses, ed. by Mary Hilson, Silke Neunsinger and Greg Patmore (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp 145 - 175. [Includes case studies of Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.]
“The Antigonish Movement of Canada and Latin America: Catholic Co-operatives, Christian Communities and Development in the Great Depression and the Cold War,” in Local Church, Global Church: Catholic Activism in the Americas before Vatican II, ed. by Stephen J.C. Andes and Julia G. Young (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 2016), pp. 207-244.
(with Fred Burrill), “Progressive Catholicism at Home and Abroad: The ‘Double Solidarité’ of Quebec Missionaries in Honduras, 1955-1975 ,” in Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History, ed. Karen Dubinsky, Adele Perry and Henry Yu. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), pp. 311-340.
“Legal Narratives of Citizenship, the Social Question, and Public Order in Colombia, 1915-1930 and After,” Citizenship Studies, vol. 17, no. 5 (2013), 530-550. Special Issue: “Narratives and Imaginaries of Citizenship in Latin America”.
« Réseaux missionnaires québécois et action sociale en Amérique latine, 1945-1980 [Quebec Missionary Networks and Social Action in Latin America, 1945-1980], » Etudes d’histoire religieuse (EHR), vol. 79, no. 1 (printemps 2013). Numéro spécial : “Les réseaux catholiques au Québec du XXe siècle”, 93-116.
« L’axe missionnaire catholique entre le Québec et l’Amérique latine. Une exploration préliminaire [The Catholic Missionary Nexus between Quebec and Latin America. A Preliminary Exploration],» Globe. Revue internationale d’études québécoises, vol. 12, no. 1 (2009), 43-66.
“Historias transnacionales: nuevas interpretaciones de los enclaves in América Latina [Transnacional Histories: New Interpretations of Enclaves in Latin America],” Nómadas [Bogotá], No. 25 (Octubre 2006), 144-154.
(With Adriana Mercedes Corso), “Los archivos notariales como fuente histórica: Una perspectiva desde la zona bananera del Magdalena,” [“Notary Records as a Source for Historians: A Perspective from the Magdalena Banana Zone”] Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, No. 31 (2004), 159-208.
“The Colombian Crisis in Historical Perspective,” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 28:55-56 (2003), 165-209.
“Colombian Bananas, Peasants, and Wage Workers,” in Work, Protest, and Identity in Twentieth-Century Latin America, ed. Vincent C. Peloso (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003), pp. 191-214. [reprint of 1984 article]
"Living in Macondo: Economy and Culture in a United Fruit Banana Enclave in Colombia," in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, ed. G.M. Joseph, C.C. LeGrand, and R.D. Salvatore (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 333-368.
"La política y la Violencia en Colombia (1946-1965): Interpretaciones en la década de los ochenta [Politics and Violence in Colombia (1946-1965): Interpretations of the 1980s]," Memoria y Sociedad [Universidad Pontífica Javeriana, Bogotá] 2:4 (Nov. 1997), 79-111.
"Informal Resistance on a Dominican Sugar Plantation during the Trujillo Dictatorship," Hispanic American Historical Review 75:4 (November 1995), 555-596. Reprinted in Ecos [Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo], año 4, no. 5 (1996), 141-98.
"Colonization and Violence in Colombia: Perspectives and Debates," Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 14:2 (1989), pp. 5-29. An earlier version of this article was published in A.R.M. Ritter, ed., Conference Proceedings: Prospects for Latin America and the Caribbean to the Year 2000 (Ottawa, 1990), pp. 238-265. Spanish translation: "Colonización y violencia en Colombia: perspectivas y debates," Minagricultura 80 Años: El agro y la cuestión social, ed. Absalón Machado (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores, Banco Ganadero, Caja Agraria, 1994), pp. 3-26.
"El conflicto de las bananeras [The Banana Conflict]", Nueva Historia de Colombia, ed. Alvaro Tirado Mejía (Bogotá: Editorial Planeta Colombiana, 1989; 2nd ed., 1996), pp. 183-218. Study of the causes of the 1928 strike against the United Fruit Company on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
"Labor Acquisition and Social Conflict on the Colombian Frontier, 1850-1936," Journal of Latin American Studies, 16:1 (1984), 27-49. Spanish translation: "Los antecedentes agrarios de la Violencia: el conflicto social en la frontera colombiana, 1850-1936," Pasado y Presente de la Violencia en Colombia, ed. Gonzalo Sánchez and Ricardo Peñaranda (Bogotá: CEREC, 1986), pp. 87-110. Reprinted in Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda and Gonzalo Sánchez, eds., Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1992), pp. 31-50.
"De las tierras públicas a las propiedades privadas: acaparamiento de tierras y conflictos agrarios en Colombia, 1870-1930 [From Public Lands into Private Properties: Land Appropriation and Agrarian Conflict in Colombia, 1870-1930]," Lecturas de Economía [Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia], 13 (1984), 13-50.
"Colombian Transformations: Peasants and Wage Labourers in the Santa Marta Banana Zone," Journal of Peasant Studies, 11:4 (1984), 178-200. An earlier version appears in Spanish in Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura [Universidad Nacional de Colombia], 11 (1983), 235-250. Reprinted in Gustavo Bell Lemus, ed., El Caribe Colombiano: Selección de Textos Históricos (Barranquilla: Ediciones Uninorte, 1988), pp. 183-199.
"Perspectives for the Historical Study of Rural Politics and the Colombian Case: An Overview," Latin American Research Review, 12:1 (1977), 7-36. Spanish translation: "Perspectivas para el estudio histórico de política rural y el caso colombiano: estudio panorámico" in Once Ensayos Sobre La Violencia (Bogotá: Centro Gaitán/ CEREC, 1985), pp. 361-409.
Think-pieces:
“Tierra, organización social y huelga: La Zona Bananera del Magdalena, 1890-1928, [Land, Social Organization and the Strike: the Magdalena Banana Zone, 1890-1928],” in Bananeras. Huelga y Masacre: 80 Años, ed. Mauricio Archila Neira and Leidy Jazmín Torres Cendales (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2010), 19-33.
“Obituary: Michael F. Jimenez,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82:4 (Nov. 2002), 755-759.
"Catherine LeGrand" [written interview] in Los Colombianistas, ed. Victoria Peralta and Michael LaRosa (Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana, 1997), 209-227; re-published by La Academia Colombiana de Historia, 2015.
"Comentario al estudio de la historiografía sobre la Violencia [Commentary on the study of historiography of La Violencia in Colombia]," in La historia al final del Milenio: ensayos de historiografía colombiana y latinoamericana, ed. by Bernardo Tovar Zambrano (Bogotá: Editorial Universidad Nacional, 1994), 425-432.
"Comentarios sobre 'La Costa Rica cafetalera en contexto comparado', de Lowell Gudmundson," Revista de Historia [Universidad Nacional, Heredia, Costa Rica]
No. 14 (julio-diciembre 1986), 41-52.
"Preface: Latin America" in Religion and Rural Revolt, ed. by Janos Bak and Gerhard Beneke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 408-413.