Position: Professor
Field: 19th Century, 20th Century, Migration
Region: Caribbean and Latin America
Office: 141E Old Horticulture
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 1:30-2:30 pm
Email: chamb311@msu.edu
Phone: 517-884-4876
My research and teaching interests center on the African Diaspora with an emphasis on the modern Caribbean and Latin America. My research intersects with the histories of colonialism (in the Caribbean), labor, nationalism, race relations, and immigration/migration. Most of these themes are addressed in my published work. My first book, Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890-1940 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010) focuses on the role of West Indian labor migration to Honduras in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in shaping the identity discourse of the nation as it relates to broader notions of blackness. My most recent book, current research project, tentatively titled From the Banana Zones to the Big Easy: West Indian and Central American Immigration to New Orleans, 1910-1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019) continues in this vein and explores West Indian and Afro-Latino (Central American) immigration to New Orleans in the early twentieth century and their integration and adjustment into a highly racialized Jim Crow New Orleans. By tracing the migration experiences of African descendants between the West Indies, Central America, and the United States, my work emphasizes the historical tradition of the African Diaspora as it relates to migration discourse and the ways in which people of African descent have fostered a shared identity and purpose across varying geographies.