Rate My Professor Kristen McCleary

Professor Kristen McCleary serves as Professor of History at James Madison University, having joined the department as Assistant Professor in 2004, promoted to Associate Professor in 2010, and to full Professor in 2024. Prior to her tenure at JMU, she held a position as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Honors College at the University of Oregon from 2003 to 2004. McCleary earned her Ph.D. in Latin American History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2002, an M.A. in History from UCLA in 1997, an M.A. in Latin American Studies from UCLA in 1991, and a B.A. in English and American Literature with minors in Visual Studies and Spanish from the University of California, San Diego in 1988. Her research specializations encompass popular culture in Argentina, Latin American theater and film, and cultural relations between Latin America and the United States. Her fields and specialties include Latin American history, urban culture, film, and photography. McCleary teaches courses in Latin American history, world history, and urban cultural history.

McCleary is the author of the monograph Staging Buenos Aires: Theater, Politics and Society in Argentina, 1860-1920, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Latin American Studies Series in 2024, which centers theater as a source of historical inquiry to examine how non-elites experienced and shaped a city undergoing dramatic transformations. Key publications also include the chapter “From Barcelona to Buenos Aires and Beyond: The Spanish Zarzuela and Theatre Migration in the Americas” in European Theatre Migrants in the Age of Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024); “Performance, Nation, and Identity: The Spanish Zarzuela in Argentina, 1890-1900” in the Journal of Nineteenth Century Theater and Film (2017); “Inflaming the Fears of Theater Goers: How Fires Shaped the Public Sphere in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1880 to 1910” in Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012); and “Ethnic Identity and Elite Idyll: A Comparison of Carnival Celebrations in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay, 1880-1910” in Social Identities (2010). She has contributed encyclopedia entries on figures such as Eva Perón, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and Carlos Gardel, as well as numerous book reviews in journals including The Americas and Hispanic American Historical Review. As Program Co-Director for JMU's Argentina Study Abroad, she leads student programs in Argentina.