Thomas Klubock
Professor and Chair
Office Hours: M/W, 11:00AM-12:00PM and by appointment
Field & Specialties
Latin America
Chile
Working-Class History
History of Gender and Sexuality
Environmental History
Education
Ph.D., Yale University
M.A. and M.Phil.,Yale University
B.A., Haverford College
Biography
Thomas Miller Klubock is a historian of modern Latin America with research specialities in social and working-class history, environmental history, and the history of gender and sexuality. His most recent book, Ránquil: Rural Rebellion, Political Violence, and Historical Memory in Chile (Yale University Press, 2022), a history of Chile’s most important peasant rebellion, examines issues of rural labor and land relations, political violence, law, and historical memory. Ránquil was awarded the 2023 Whitaker book prize from the Mid-Atlantic Conference of Latin American Studies (MECLAS). Klubock is also the author of La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory (Duke University Press, 2014), a social and environmental history of conflicts between indigenous Mapuche communities, poor peasants, settlers, and estate owners over forest resources from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century in Chile's southern frontier territory. La Frontera received the Bolton-Johnson book prize from the American Historical Association-Conference on Latin American History (CLAH), the Bryce Wood Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) (co-recipient), and the Charles Weyerhaeuser Award from the Forest History Society, and was named a Times Higher Education Book of the Year for 2014. His first book, Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile’s El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904-1951 (Duke University Press, 1998) explores the history of gender and politics in a working-class mining community in Chile. Klubock is also co-editor of The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2013). Klubock has won fellowships from the American Council on Learned Societies (ACLS), Fulbright, the National Humanities Center, and the John Simon Guggenheim foundation. He is currently doing research for a book on the history of rivers and water wars in Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina titled Nation of Rivers: A History of Water and Water Wars in Modern South America.
Publications
Books
Ránquil: Rural Rebellion, Political Violence, and Historical Memory in Chile (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022).
La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited with Elizabeth Hutchison, Nara Milanich, and Peter Winn (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013).
Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile's El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904-1951 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
Articles and Book Chapters
“Las Que Van Quedando en el Camino (The Women Left by the Wayside): Sex, Patriarchy, and Revolution in the Chilean Countryside,” The American Historical Review (accepted for publications and forthcoming).
“The Early History of Water Wars in Chile: Rivers, Ecological Disaster, and Multinational Mining Companies,” Environment and History, vol.27, no.3 (August 2021) and published digitally, July, 2019, https://doi.org/10.3197/096734019X15463432087008.
“El Trabajo de la Naturaleza y la Naturaleza del Trabajo: Historia Medioambiental como Historia Social” in Rodrigo Cordero Vega ed. Formas de Comprender el Presente: Conferencias Reunidas de la Cátedra Norbert Lechner (2010-2011 (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales, 2012); pp.57-80.
“The Nature of the Frontier: Forests and Peasant Uprisings in Southern Chile,” Social History, vol.36, No.2 (May 2011), pp.121-142.
“Ránquil: Violence and Peasant Politics on Chile's Southern Frontier” in Greg Grandin and Gilbert Joseph eds., A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pp.121-162.
“The Politics of Forests and Forestry on Chile’s Southern Frontier, 1880s-1940s,” The Hispanic American Historical Review vol.86, no.3 (August 2006), pp.535-570.
“Labor, Land, and Ecological Change in Chile's Southern Forests, 1973-1998" in Victims of the Miracle? Chilean Workers and the Neoliberal Model, 1973-1998, ed. Peter Winn (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp.337-387.
"Class, Community, and Neoliberalism in Chile: Copper Workers and the Labor Movement during the Military Dictatorship and Restoration of Democracy, 1973-1998" in Victims of the Miracle? Chilean Workers and the Neoliberal Model, 1973-1998, ed. Peter Winn (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 209-259.
“Chile,” The Encyclopedia of World Environmental History, ed. Shepard Kresh III, John R. McNeill, Carolyn Merchant (London: Routledge, 2003).
“History and Memory in Neoliberal Chile: Patricio Guzmán’s Obstinate Memory and The Battle of Chile,” Radical History Review, No.85, winter 2003, pp.272-281.
“Nationalism, Ideologies of Race and Ethnicity, and Working-Class Politics in Twentieth-Century Chile” in Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the North, ed. Gilbert Joseph (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), pp.231-267.
"Writing the History of Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Chile," The Hispanic American Historical Review vol.81, no.3-4 (August-November 2001), pp. 493-518.
"From Welfare Capitalism to the Free Market in Chile: Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Copper Mines" in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of United States-Latin America Relations, ed. Gilbert Joseph, Catherine LeGrande, and Ricardo Salvatore (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), pp.369-399.
"Copper Workers, Organized Labor, and Popular Protest under Military Rule in Chile, 1973-1986," International Labor and Working-Class History, No.52 (Fall 1997), pp.106-133. Reprinted in Whose Side Are You On? Race, Gender, Work and Identity in Twentieth-Century Latin America, ed. Vincent C. Peloso (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003).
"Morality and Good Habits: Constructing Gender and Class in the Chilean Copper Mines, 1904-1951" in The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers: From Household and Factory to the Union Hall and Ballot Box, ed. John D. French and Daniel James (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp.232-263.
"Working-Class Masculinity, Middle-Class Morality, and Labor Politics among Chilean Miners," Journal of Social History, vol.30, no.2 (Winter 1996), pp.435-463.
*Recipient of the 1997 Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) Article Prize.
"Hombres y Mujeres en El Teniente: La Construcción de género y clase en la minería chilena del cobre, 1904-1951" in Disciplina y desacato: construcción de identidad en Chile, siglos xix y xx ed. Lorena Godoy, Elizabeth Hutchinson, Karin Rosemblatt, Soledad Zárate (Santiago: Ediciones SUR, 1995), pp.223-253.
"Sexualidad y proletarización en la mina El Teniente," Proposiciones, no.21 (Santiago, December 1992), pp. 64-77.
Edited Special Issues of Journals
Introduction and editor, with Allison Bigelow, “Special Collection: Latin American Studies and the Humanities: One Year Later,” Latin American Research Review, vol.54, no.4 (December 2019), pp.970-975.
Introduction and editor, with Allison Bigelow, “Special Collection: Latin American Studies and the Humanities: Past, Present, and Future,” Latin American Research Review, vol.53, no.4 (September 2018), pp.573-580.
Editor, with Kate Brown, special issue of International Labor and Working-Class History, “Environment and Labor,” no.85 (Spring 2014).
Editor, with Paulo Fontes, special issue of International Labor and Working-Class History, "Labor History and Public History," no.76, (Fall 2009).
Editor, with Greg Grandin, special issue of The Radical History Review, “Truth Commissions: State Terror, History, and Memory,” no.97 (Winter 2007).
Editor, with Peter Winn, special issue of International Labor and Working-Class History, “Gender and Labor History,” no.63 (Spring 2003).