Assistant Professor
Stokes Hall S309
Telephone: 617-552-1196
Email: angeles.picone@bc.edu
Nation-making, border regions, spatial history, and the environment.
I am a historian of Modern Latin America specializing in the southern cone. I am interested in the intersection of nature and nation-making in border regions. Particularly, I am drawn to questions on how people experienced a shared sense of community through their spatial practices.
My forthcoming book, Landscaping Patagonia: Spatial History and Nation-Making in Chile and Argentina, examines how explorers, migrants, authorities, and visitors constructed their versions of ‘Chile’ and ‘Argentina’ in the Northern Patagonian Andes. I argue that between the 1890s and 1940s, these groups created shared versions of nationhood through regional, often cross-border, interpretations and transformations of the natural environment. This study shows how different actors – namely explorers, settlers, authorities, visitors, and bandits – sought to make Patagonia their own by transforming a collection of geographical sites into a landscape that evoked a shared past and a common future.
At Boston College, I teach courses on Modern Latin America, Spatial History, Environmental History, Sports History, and Borderlands. My teaching frequently includes unessay assignments and digital projects, from board games to websites.
Beginning in the Fall 2024, I will be co-director of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities. I am also affiliated faculty in the Environmental Studies Program and the CloughCenter for the Study of Constitutional Democracy (2023-2025).
Landscaping Patagonia: Spatial History, Nation, and the Environment in Chile and Argentina (UNC Press, forthcoming 2025).
“On Borderlands” in Rachel King and Trinidad Rico (eds), Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies, UCL Press. (forthcoming July 2024).
Settling Bariloche: Explorations, Violence, and Tourism in the Argentine Frontier, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Aug. 2022.
“Legitimizing and Resisting Spatial Violence in Southern Chile (1890s-1910s),” Historia Crítica, no. 82 (2021): 55-78.
“Comentario a ‘Orden y comercio. La construcción de estado y ciudadanía en la cordillera norpatagónica a principios del siglo XX’ by Jorge E. Muñoz Sougarretand Eva Muzzopappa, Araucanía-Norpatagonia II: La fluidez, lo disruptivo y el sentido de la frontera, edited by Brenda Matossian, Andrés Núñez, Paula Núñez, Marcela Tamagnini, and Carolina Odone Correa, 53–76. Aperturas. Viedma: Editorial UNRN, 2018.
“La idea de turismo en San Carlos de Bariloche a través de dos guías,” Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo, 22:2 (2013): 198-215.