History Department Welcomes New Faculty

Dr. Pedro Cantisano (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is a historian of modern Brazil and Latin America, specializing in social, legal and urban history. His book project Rio de Janeiro on Trial: Law and Urban Reform in Modern Brazil explores how early-twentieth-century judicial and intellectual legal conflicts shaped the Brazilian capital’s urban space, while contributing to broader transformations in state governance, property rights, and popular legal mobilization in Brazil.

His primary area of research is Latin America’s, and especially Brazil’s liberal order (1880s-1930s). He is particularly interested in the legal histories of slavery and emancipation, cities, and social movements. His work has been published in the Law and History Review, and in several Brazilian journals and edited volumes, such as Propriedades em Transformação, 130 Anos: Em Busca da República, Constitucionalismo de Realidade, and Emancipação, Inclusão e Exclusão. Between 2015 and 2016, Dr. Cantisano coordinated the História Oral do Supremo, an oral history project that interviewed Brazilian Supreme Court justices (1988-2013).

Dr. Cantisano’s work has been supported by the University of Michigan Law School’s Fellowship in Race, Law, and History, the Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School’s Fellows in Rio Program, and the American Society for Legal History’s Wallace Johnson Program for First Book Authors. He has also participated in the Law and Humanities Interdisciplinary Junior Scholars Workshop. Before joining UNO, Dr. Cantisano taught at Kenyon College, in Ohio. This fall at UNO he will teach World Civilizations II and History of Latin America.