I am an Assistant Professor of History at Boston College. I specialize in the spatial history of Modern Latin America focusing on on border regions of the Southern Cone and their intersection with nature and nation-making. Particularly, I am drawn to questions on how people experienced a shared sense of community through their spatial practices.
My forthcoming book, Landscaping Patagonia: Spatial History and Nation-Making in Chile and Argentina (UNC Press, 2025), examines how explorers, migrants, authorities, and visitors constructed their versions of ‘Chile’ and ‘Argentina’ in the Northern Patagonian Andes. I argue that between the 1890s and 1940s, these groups created shared versions of nationhood through regional, often cross-border, interpretations and transformations of the natural environment. This study shows how different actors – namely explorers, settlers, authorities, visitors, and bandits – sought to make Patagonia their own by transforming a collection of geographical sites into a landscape that evoked a shared past and a common future.
At Boston College, I teach courses on Modern Latin America, Spatial History, Environmental History, Sports History, and Borderlands. My teaching frequently includes unessay assignments and digital projects, from board games to websites. I’m also co-director of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities and affiliated faculty in the Environmental Studies Program and the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy (2023-2025).
I go by either María de los Ángeles or just Ángeles (hear it) [note on my name].