A New Ph.D. Track from the Department of History - Launching Fall 2027
Rethink the border between Latin American and Latinx history.
For too long, Latin American history and U.S. Latinx history have been treated as separate fields, creating an artificial divide that obscures the shared social networks, migrations, and political and economic forces that have shaped peoples across the Western Hemisphere for centuries. The new Crossing Borders Ph.D. cluster asks a different question: what becomes visible when we study these histories together?
Why This Cluster, Why Now
The numbers make the case for themselves. The U.S. Hispanic/Latino population topped 62 million in 2020 — 19% of the country and its largest ethnic and racial minority group, comprising more than a quarter of all K-12 students nationwide. In Indiana, the share of Hispanic high school graduates has more than doubled in a decade, and Latinx enrollment at IU Bloomington has grown from 2.2% in 2005 to 13.4% of the entering class in 2024. The field is growing and so is the need for scholars trained to understand it on its own terms.
What Makes This Program Different
- A genuinely transnational approach. Move beyond the territorial boundaries of nation, citizenship, and language to trace how people, ideas, money, and information actually circulate across borders.
- Faculty expertise across the hemisphere. Work with historians specializing in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, united by a shared commitment to studying these regions as one interconnected field rather than isolated subfields.
- Sources and stories often left out of the archive. Learn to recover the histories of people who have been historically overlooked by institutional archives using multidisciplinary methods that center how communities understood and organized their own worlds.
- A field-defining premise. Treating Latin American and Latinx history as mutually constitutive fields means recognizing that the U.S. Latinx experience matters to Latin American history and that the reverse is equally true. This cluster builds that premise into its foundation, rather than leaving students to discover it on their own.
- Broad scope, focused depth. While the cluster centers migration from the Spanish-speaking regions that have historically driven Latinx immigration to the U.S. — Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Central America, Venezuela, and Colombia — applications are welcome from students studying forced, contracted, or voluntary migration to the Americas from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East as well.
Who Should Apply
Prospective students interested in the intersections of geopolitical borders, transnational migration, and labor, whatever the regional focus, are encouraged to apply. This is a program for scholars who want to study connection instead of division, and who see the history of the Americas as one continuous, contested, and deeply human story.
Position Yourself at the Forefront of the Field
The historical profession is evolving to meet changing student demographics and institutional needs. This cluster establishes Indiana University as a leader in that shift, equipping the next generation of researchers and educators with the training the moment demands.
The College of Arts + Sciences