HCIAS Wednesday Colloquium – Dialogues Across World Regions Communities of Knowledge: The United States and Latin America in a Global Context (1870-1930)

Communities of knowledge and expertise that cross national and regional boundaries are nothing new. In Latin America, the United States, and elsewhere, knowledge and expertise were wielded by both imperial and nationalist interests, sometimes in direct competition. Between 1870 and 1930 professional engineering emerged as a state project, and engineers became the most numerous and mobile among new social groups at the forefront of knowledge-based communities. The talk examines the ways in which newly professionalized and highly mobile engineers forged new communities of knowledge and expertise that facilitated extra-regional connections and exchange, but that also created new forms of exclusion.