Contact Information
Department of History MC/466
810 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Jerry Dávila holds the Jorge Paulo Lemann Chair in Brazilian History at the University of Illinois. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Illinois Global Institute, established in 2019 to advance UIUC's work with international area studies centers and global themes.
Dávila's research focuses on the influence of racial thought in public policy in Brazil, as well as the state and social movements in the twentieth century.
He is the author of several books including Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization (Duke, 2010), recipient of the Latin Studies Association Brazil Section Book Prize; and of Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945 (Duke, 2003).
In 2000, Dávila taught as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of São Paulo, and in 2005, he held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro. He has also received the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship.
He has written for publications including the New York Times and the Cairo Review about the experiences of military rule and redemocratization in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, the subject of his Dictatorship in South America (Wiley, 2013). Dávila is also a co-author of A History of World Societies (Macmillan, 2018).
He is past-president of the Conference on Latin American History, the affiliate of the American Historical Association dedicated to the study of Latin America.
Research Interests
The influence of racial thought in public policy, as well as the state and social movements in the twentieth century.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Executive Director, Illinois Global Institute
Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Professor, Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies
Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Recent Publications
Dávila, J. (2021). Dossiê: Independência e instrução no Brasil, Chile e nos Estados Unidos da América. Historia da Educacao, 25. https://doi.org/10.1590/2236-3459/106499
Dávila, J. (2019). Gilberto Freyre: Racial Populism and Ethnic Nationalism. In W. Anderson, R. Roque, & R. Ventura Santos (Eds.), Luso-Tropicalism and Its Discontents: The Making and Unmaking of Racial Exceptionalism (pp. 45-67). Berghahn Books.
Baer, W., Dávila, W. J., de Melo Modenesi, A., da Graça Derengowski Fonseca, M., & Kerstenetzky, J. (Eds.) (2017). Brazil's Economy: An Institutional and Sectoral Approach. (Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315175140
Davila, W. J., de Melo Modenesi, A., da Graça Derengowski Fonseca, M., & Kerstenetzky, J. (2017). Introduction: Case studies in Brazil’s economy. In W. Baer, J. Dávila, A. de Melo Modenesi, M. da Graça Derengowski Fonseca, & J. Kerstenetsky (Eds.), Brazil’s Economy: An Institutional and Sectoral Approach (pp. 1-5). Routledge.
Dávila, J. (2017). Challenging racism in Brazil: Legal suits in the context of the 1951 anti-discrimination law. Varia Historia, 33(61), 163-185. https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-87752017000100008