About My Work
Andra B. Chastain, assistant professor of history at Washington State University Vancouver, is a historian of modern Latin America interested in questions of urban space, infrastructure, expertise, inequality, and lived experience. Her first monograph, Chile Underground: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City, examines the history of the metro system in Santiago, Chile, to show how this monumental urban transportation system became a key site to build and contest power under democracy and dictatorship. It draws on archival research in Chile and France and oral histories conducted in Santiago. This book, forthcoming with Yale University Press, expands on her dissertation, which won the Michael Katz Award for best dissertation in urban history from the Urban History Association. Her research interests also include urban environmental history, the global Cold War, and the history of technology. Together with Timothy W. Lorek, she co-edited Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America’s Long Cold War (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the Conference on Latin American History and has appeared in the Journal of Urban History and the Journal of Transport History. She is developing a new research project that aims for a comparative, transnational history of urban smog in the Americas with case studies of Southern California, Mexico City, and Santiago.
Citations
Chile Underground: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City. Manuscript under contract.
“Rethinking Basic Infrastructure: French Aid and Metro Development in Postwar Latin America,” Comparativ vol. 30, no. 1/2 (2020): 128–141. Special issue: “Transforming Cities: Urbanization and International Development in Africa and Latin America since 1945,” edited by Marc Frey, Sönke Kunkel, and Nancy Kwak.
“‘A Shameful and Uncivilized Spectacle’: Taxibuses, Students, and the Conflicted Road to Deregulation in Pinochet’s Chile, 1975–1978,” Journal of Transport History 42, no. 2 (online first, December 2020), 1–19.
“The Santiago Metro as Microcosm of Chile.” NACLA: North American Congress on Latin America (October 2019).
Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America’s Long Cold War, co-editor with Timothy W. Lorek. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.
“Planning the Santiago Metro in Cold War Chile,” in Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America’s Long Cold War. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020, 237–257.
“Beyond Resistance: New Works on Urban Popular Politics in Latin America’s Informal Cities.” Journal of Urban History, vol. 43, no. 6, 960–967. 2017.
“Francis Violich and the Rise and Fall of Urban Developmental Planning in Chile, 1956–1969.” Revista de Historia Iberoamericana, vol. 4, no. 2, 10–39. 2011.
Professional Associations
Latin American Studies Association
American Historical Association
Urban History Association