Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow Jaime Pensado, associate professor of history, has been named one of two Kingdon Fellows for the 2022-23 academic year at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Through a generous bequest from Robert M. Kingdon, the Kingdon Fellowship sponsors scholars working in the humanities in the historical, literary, artistic, and/or philosophical studies of Christian and/or Jewish religious traditions and their role in society. Projects may focus on any period from antiquity to the present, on any part of the world, and in any field in the humanities. They may explore various forms of the Jewish and/or Christian traditions; the interaction of one or both of these with other religious traditions; and/or the relationship of one or both of these religions to other aspects of society within or outside of Europe.
Pensado’s fellowship project is titled "The German Connection in the Inter-American Cold War: Adveniat and the Radicalization of Latin American Catholic Students during the Global Sixties," a book examines the political tensions between European and Latin American actors in response to state repression and Liberation Theology. These actors include leading figures of Adveniat, the Episcopal Conference of Latin America, the International Movement of Catholic Students, the Catholic Youth of International Students, and the Latin American Secretariat. While the scholarship has made significant contributions to challenge the overwhelming attention once given to US imperialism in the region, little has been done to investigate the role Western Europe and progressive Catholics played in the radicalization of Latin American youth during the Cold War era.
Pensado specializes in contemporary Latin American history, students movements, youth culture, the sixties, and the Cold War. His second book manuscript, Love & Despair: Catholic Activism, State Repression, and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico, is forthcoming this year from the University of California Press. His first book Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture during the Long Sixties (Stanford University Press, 2013) received the ”Mexico History Book Price” from the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH), while his co-edited volume with Enrique Ochoa, México Beyond 1968: Revolutionaries, Radical, and Repression during the Global Sixties and Subversive Seventies, was published in 2018 with the University of Arizona Press.