Patrick Barr-Melej, Ph.D.

Patrick Barr-Melej is Professor of History and an award-winning scholar and teacher who specializes in modern Latin American history, with emphasis on twentieth-century political and cultural history.

Barr-Melej’s publications include the books Psychedelic Chile: Youth, Counterculture, and Politics on the Road to Socialism and Dictatorship and Reforming Chile: Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class, both published by the University of North Carolina Press. Psychedelic Chile was listed among “Historical Studies of 2017 to Highlight” by the newspaper La Tercera (Santiago, Chile), and reviewers in leading academic journals have called the book “wonderfully lively and illuminating” (American Historical Review) and “a landmark” study (The Sixties). Barr-Melej’s articles have appeared in such journals as the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Journal of Latin American Studies, and The Americas, and his essays have appeared in numerous edited volumes. He has given invited presentations around the world, including talks at the Sorbonne (University of Paris), the University of Oxford, and the National Library of Chile.

Originally from South America, Barr-Melej’s teaching awards include the Distinguished Mentor Award from the Ohio University Honors Tutorial College and his commendations for research include the College of Arts & Sciences Outstanding Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Award in the Humanities. He has held visiting professorships in the graduate programs of Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University and University of Concepción.

Barr-Melej is the former Executive Director of the Center for International Studies, was chair of the History Department and interim chair of the African American Studies

Department, and served in the Provost’s office coordinating academic-program assessments. He is currently the Latin America series editor for Ohio University Press and is a Faculty Senator representing the College of Arts and Sciences. Barr-Melej also evaluates grant applications for the Chilean government’s FONDECYT program and is the former president of the Southwestern Social Science Association, the oldest interdisciplinary social-science organization in the United States.

His graduate advisees in History and Latin American Studies have produced M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations on such topics as U.S.-Chilean relations in the 1960s; Guatemalan revolutionary ideology; Chile’s opposition journalism under the Pinochet dictatorship; cultural politics in post-Sandinista Nicaragua; gender and economy on the U.S.-Mexican border; and human-rights policy in Argentina after the Dirty War. His undergraduate courses include “Modern Latin America,” “Modern Mexico,” “Historical Research and Writing,” and “World History Since 1750.”