History Professor Receives a Prestigious Book Award

Kirsten Schultz, Ph.D.

Professor Kirsten Schultz of the History Department is this year's co-recipient of one of the most prestigious book awards in the field of Latin American History and Latin American Studies. Professor Schultz's book From Conquest to Colony: Empire, Wealth, and Difference in Eighteenth-Century Brazil (Yale University Press, 2023) has received the Warren Dean Prize in Brazilian History.

"From Conquest to Colony" Book Cover

From Conquest to Colony examines debates about wealth, difference and governance and how they informed understandings of Brazil's status within the eighteenth-century Portuguese empire," she explains. The book explores how Brazil's status as a colony forced the conflict in different, coexisting societies of Africans, Europeans and Indigenous peoples, whether they were rich, poor, enslaved or free; all experienced issues related to their own ancestry, legal status and socioeconomic standing in Schultz's research time period.

The Warren Dean Memorial Prize was established in 1995 to honor the distinguished historian of Brazil, Warren Dean, Professor of History at New York University. It recognizes the book or article judged to be the most significant work on the history of Brazil published in English during the year prior to the award year. The award is given by Conference on Latin American History, a professional association devoted to encourage the diffusion of knowledge about Latin America through fostering the study and improving the teaching of Latin American history. Receiving this award is a very special honor for Professor Schultz because she was one of Warren Dean's Ph.D. students when he passed away unexpectedly in 1994.

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