Ohio University’s Arts & Sciences Awards Committee selected Dr. Patrick Barr-Melej, Professor of History, as the humanities recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Award for 2017-18.
The award was announced during the 2018 Fall Gala of the College of Arts & Science.
The award recognizes “a major contribution to research, scholarship, and/or creative activity in a relevant field at the national or international level.” Each year, the College of Arts & Sciences accepts nominations and makes one Grasselli Brown award in each of the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
Barr-Melej recently was promoted to the rank of full professor. His latest book is Psychedelic Chile: Youth, Counterculture, and Politics on the Road to Socialism and Dictatorship. Published with one of the top presses in the field, the University of North Carolina Press, the book was the primary accomplishment that led the History Department to forward him for this award. In praising Psychedelic Chile, Valaria Manzano of the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales in Argentina says that Barr-Melej “helps to open up questions regarding revolutionary subjectivity and the meanings of socialism and democracy.”
In addition to his most recent book, Barr-Melej has presented his research nationally and internationally and contributed to major volumes in the field. In 2017, he published a chapter in The Political History of Chile, vol. 1, edited by Juan Luis Ossa and Iván Jaksic. Translated as “Manipulating the ‘Soul of the People’: Culture and Political Practices in Contemporary Chile,” his contribution opens new historiographical ground by exploring how and why varying political actors, from the Right to the Marxist Left, actively incorporated and deployed folkloric imagery and music in their propaganda and discourses to legitimize and valorize their political projects as authentically Chilean.
Barr-Melej offers a range of courses dealing with modern Latin American and world history, as well as contemporary history. During the 2018-19 academic year, Barr-Melej is teaching the following courses:
- Fall 2018
- HIST 3233/5233: The History of Modern Mexico
- CH 6010: Introduction to Contemporary History
- Spring 2019
- HIST 3231: Modern Latin America
- HIST 4000/6000: Colloquium in Latina American History
For more on Barr-Melej’s research and teaching interests, visit his History Department profile.
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