Faculty

Marshall C. Eakin
Professor of History
Faculty Director Ingram Scholarship Program

PhD, UCLA, 1981

Latin American history, with emphasis on Brazil and Central America; nationalism and nation-building, history of industrialization

Telephone:  615-322-3328
Email: marshall.c.eakin@vanderbilt.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11-12 noon; Wednesdays 2-3 pm; and by appointment
Office: 100 Benson Hall

Marshall Eakin is a historian of Latin America specializing in the history of Brazil.  Although his work spans all of Brazilian history, his major publications have concentrated on economic and business history, industrialization, and the processes of nationalism and nation-building--primarily in the twentieth century.  His first book, British Enterprise in Brazil:  The St. John d’el Rey Mining Company and the Morro Velho Gold Mine, 1830-1960 (Duke, 1989), traces the history of the most successful foreign enterprise in 19th- and 20th-century Brazil.   Tropical Capitalism:  The Industrialization of Belo Horizonte, Brazil (Palgrave, 2001) examines the industrialization of the second-largest industrial center in Brazil.  Much of his work addresses audiences beyond the academy.  This work includes Brazil:  The Once and Future Country (St. Martin’s, 1997), a one-volume introduction to Brazil for beginners and two video courses with the Teaching Company, The Conquest of the Americas and The Americas in a Revolutionary Era.  His latest book is The History of Latin America:  Collision of Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Eakin’s latest book project is “One People, One Nation:  Brazilian Identity in the Twentieth Century”.

Eakin has received a Fulbright-Hayes fellowship and grants from the Tinker Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Tennessee Humanities Council, and the Corporation for National Service.  He has been the recipient of the Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1991), the Chancellor’s Cup (1994), the Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1994), the Ernest A. Jones Faculty Adviser Award (1996), the Alumni Education Award (1999), and a Chair of Teaching Excellence (1998-2001).  He was recently named the Joe B. Wyatt Distinguished Professor (2004-2005).

Eakin has taught a wide variety of courses in history and Latin American studies at all levels from freshmen to Ph.D. students.  These include Colonial and Modern Latin America, Brazilian Civilization, Visions of Amazonia, Reform and Revolution in Latin America, and the History Workshop.  On several occasions he has offered courses for the Vanderbilt Retirement Learning Program.  He has team taught courses with faculty in Engineering, Divinity, and Peabody College. 

Eakin became the director of the Ingram Scholarship Program in August 2009.  The program sponsors students who demonstrate a willingness and ability to combine a successful business or professional career with a lifelong commitment to finding solutions to critical societal problems.

Eakin has taught at Vanderbilt since 1983.