By Victoria Hochman, Thompson & Bender, for Sarah Lawrence College

Jan. 30, 2019:  Sarah Lawrence College faculty member Margarita Fajardo has been awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to complete her book on Latin America’s influence on the global debate on economic development and capitalism after World War II.

The grant is one of 253 totaling $14.8 million awarded nationwide to projects that support the humanities and preserve cultural heritage.

Fajardo, the Alice Stone Ilchman Chair in Comparative and International Studies, will receive $60,000 to complete her book, titled The World that Latin America Created. The book examines the contributions of a school of economists, sociologists, diplomats, and policymakers known as the “Cepalinos” to shaping the thinking about economic development and capitalism during three decades after World War II.

“It is a great honor for a young scholar and an unrivaled opportunity to finish this project,’’ said Fajardo, who has been teaching at Sarah Lawrence College since 2015. “This grant will be of great assistance in helping me to conduct additional research and complete my book, as well as benefit Sarah Lawrence College and its students.’’

Farjardo, a historian whose focus is modern Latin America, is originally from Colombia and received her BA from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, followed by her MA and PhD from Princeton University.

She has published a number of scholarly works on Latin American history, including Between Capitalism and Democracy: The Political Economy of Social Science in Latin America, 1968-1980, which she co-authored with Jeremy Adelman; the chapter titled "The Arc of Development: Economists' and Sociologists' Quest for the State" in the book State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: The Rise and Fall of the Developmental State, edited by Agustin E. Ferraro and Miguel A. Centeno (Cambridge University Press, 2018); and the chapter titled "Circumventing Imperialism: The Global Economy in Latin American Social Sciences" in the book Empire and the Global Social Sciences: Global Histories of Knowledge, edited by Jeremy Adelman (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).

Professor Fajardo is a member of the American Historical Association (AHA), the History of Economics Society (HES), and the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

NEH Chairman Jon Parrish Peede said that the recent round of grants will fund projects that apply new technologies to innovative humanities research, help document, preserve, and ensure access to materials of critical importance to the nation’s cultural heritage, and support advanced research by humanities scholars.

“From cutting-edge digital projects to the painstaking practice of traditional scholarly research, these new NEH grants represent the humanities at its most vital and creative,” said Peede in announcing the grants on December 12. “These projects will shed new light on age-old questions, safeguard our cultural heritage, and expand educational opportunities in classrooms nationwide.” 

Pictured here: Margarita Fajardo.

Photo courtesy Victoria Hochman, Thompson & Bender, for Sarah Lawrence College

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