Hunt Family Assistant Professor of History
Cecilia Márquez is the Hunt Family Assistant Professor in History at Duke University and previously taught Latino/a Studies at New York University. Her research focuses on the history of Latinxs in the US South from 1940-Present. Dr. Márquez writes and teaches about the formation of Latinx identity, Latinx social movements, and the importance of region in shaping Latinx identity. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Her book, "Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation" is now available for purchase!
More on "Making the Latino South": In the 1940s South, it seemed that non-Black Latino people were on the road to whiteness. In fact, in many places throughout the region governed by Jim Crow, they were able to attend white schools, live in white neighborhoods, and marry white southerners. However, by the early 2000s, Latino people in the South were routinely cast as "illegal aliens" and targeted by some of the harshest anti-immigrant legislation in the country. This book helps explain how race evolved so dramatically for this population over the course of the second half of the twentieth century.
Marquez guides readers through time and place from Washington, DC, to the deep South, tracing how non-Black Latino people moved through the region's evolving racial landscape. In considering Latino presence in the South's schools, its workplaces, its tourist destinations, and more, Marquez tells a challenging story of race-making that defies easy narratives of progressive change and promises to reshape the broader American histories of Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, immigration, work, and culture.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
2021
History, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Hunt Family Assistant Professor of History at Duke University
2019
History, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
Assistant Professor of History at Duke University
Education
2016
University of Virginia
Earned her Ph.D. in American History
2013
University of Virginia
Earned her M.A. in American History
2011
Swarthmore College
Holds a B.A. in Black Studies and Gender and Sexuality studies