Graduate awarded the Latin American Studies Association's Best Dissertation Prize

Recent graduate Uri Rosenheck (History) has received the Latin American Studies Association's Best Dissertation Prize for his PhD thesis; Fighting for Home Abroad: Remembrance and Oblivion of World War II in Brazil.

Four and a half centuries after Europeans first set foot on the South American continent, it was the Brazilians' turn to explore, wage war and conquer European soil as Allies in the Italian Campaign during the Second World War. The arrival of the 25,000-strong Brazilian Expeditionary Force (Força expedicionária brasileira- FEB) was a unique episode in Brazilian and Latin American history. Brazilians interpreted this inverted encounter between the New World and the Old in several ways, and they assigned it diverse meanings.

In his dissertation, Dr. Rosenheck explored how Brazilians negotiated this past, and while doing so, how they understood what it meant to be Brazilian. In his research, Dr. Rosenheck analyzed such texts as monuments, memoirs, comics, trade cards, stamps, poems, political pamphlets, and other archival sources.

The Latin American Studies Association (LASA) is the largest professional Association in the world for individuals and institutions engaged in the study of Latin America. International and multi-disciplinary, forty-five percent of its 7,000 members reside outside the United States. LASA's Brazil Section is the second largest in the association. The Best Dissertation Prize is given by the Brazil Section at the LASA annual conference for the best dissertation written on Brazil in all disciplines in the preceding year.

Dr. Rosenheck's advisor was Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and Chair of History Jeffrey Lesser.