John Soluri
Professor Soluri's research and teaching explore the relationship between social and environmental change in Latin America. He is currently completing a book project, Refashioning Patagonia: Animals, International Markets, and the Particularity of Place, that examines how the commodification of wild and domesticated animals for textiles transformed Patagonia.
He recently collaborated with colleagues in Colombia and Brazil to edit a new synthesis of modern Latin American environmental history. In addition, the University of Texas will be publishing a second edition of his award-winning book, Banana Cultures, in 2021.
During the 2019-20 academic year, he co-convened an A.W. Mellon funded Sawyer Seminar, “Bread and Water: Access, Belonging, and Environmental Justice in the City.” He directed Matthew Nielsen’s dissertation “Unruliness at the Margins: Environment and Politics in the Lower Orinoco River Basin, 1600s - 1700” (2019). His current graduate student,
Francisco Javier Bonilla, is working on a history of water infrastructure in twentieth-century Panama. Beyond the academy, Soluri chairs the Board of Directors of Building New Hope, a Pittsburgh-based not-for-profit that partners with Central Americans to promote youth education and sustainable agriculture.
- Education
- Ph.D.: University of Michigan, 1998
Source: Carnegie Mellon University
