Tom Rogers, Assistant Professor (B.A., Williams College; Ph.D., Duke University). Modern Latin American history, especially Brazil; labor and environmental history; Afro-Latin American history. Author of The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil, awarded the Alfred A. Wallace Prize, Agricultural History Society. Centering the experiences of workers, the book describes social and agro-environmental change in the sugarcane region of Pernambuco, Brazil. Adopting these two perspectives simultaneously allows for a richer understanding of the region’s history, including the dramatic labor union mobilization and political activism that punctuated the 1960s and 1970s.
I am interested in the ways labor and environmental histories intertwine, something most obvious in agrarian contexts but relevant elsewhere as well. I have also worked on and taught Afro-Latin American history and Caribbean history. I am currently carrying out research for a project on the first ethanol boom in Brazil, titled “Hunger and Environmental Destruction in Brazil’s Forgotten Ethanol Boom, 1971-1990.” In 2010 I spent six months in Pernambuco teaching history graduate students and researching this project.
My Curriculum Vitae