Denisa Jashari
Assistant Professor, History Department
Advisory Board Member and Senior Research Associate, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean
Courses
- 2024 Fall
- HST 300 Selected Topics - Urban Revolution in Latin Amer
- 2024 Spring
- HST 323 Modern Latin America
- HST 803 Theories and Philosophies of History
- 2023 Fall
- HST 322 Colonial Latin America
- HST 300 Selected Topics - The Cold War in Latin America
Highest degree earned
Bio
Denisa Jashari is a historian of modern Latin America, focusing on twentieth century Chilean urban and social history. She is currently working on her first book manuscript tentatively titled, “Santiago’s Urban Battleground: Space and the Production of the Working Poor in Chile, 1872-1994.” The manuscript argues that the production of pobladores (poor, urban dwellers) as a social category was a fraught historical and spatial process. This category was used and mobilized both by the elites and the working poor themselves to advance political aims. It reveals the multiple historical processes that produced the urban poor, converting them over time into the central problem urban politics sought to resolve under wildly divergent political regimes from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries.
Blending grassroots dimensions of urban struggle with municipal and national contestations reveals as much about the political culture of the urban poor as it does about the state’s use of urban space as a tool of governance. This research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, the American Historical Association Albert J. Beveridge Research Grant, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, and more.
Prior to joining Syracuse University, Jashari taught at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She was a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame in 2020. Jashari earned a B.S. in biochemistry and Hispanic studies from Trinity College, and an M.A. in history and Latin American studies from Indiana University in Bloomington.
Areas of Expertise
Research Grant Awards and Projects
"Spatial Conflicts: Producing the Urban Poor in Santiago, Chile, 1872-1994", Sponsored by SU Humanities Center’s Maxwell Faculty Fellowship for Spring 2026.
Selected Publications
- Journal Articles
- Jashari, D., "The Chilean Christians for Socialism Movement: Liberationist, Third Worldist, and Utopian." Latin American Research Review, 2024.
- Jashari, D., "Carrying the Cross: Popular Christian Communities and Religious Protest during Pinochet’s Dictatorship, 1973-90." Journal of Latin American Studies, 2024.
- Book Reviews
- Jashari, D., "Review of Tanya Harmer, Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America." In Actuel Marx Intervenciones. LOM Ediciones, 2023.
- Jashari, D., Macaya, Á. D., "The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship." H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews, 2021.
- Jashari, D., Schlotterbeck, M. E., "Beyond the Vanguard: Everyday Revolutionaries in Allende’s Chile." The Latin Americanist, 2019.
- Jashari, D., Trumper, C., "Culture and Politics in Allende’s Chile." Cultural Politics, 2018.
- Essays
- Jashari, D., "Spatial Coups." In A Contracorriente: Una Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos. , 2023.
- Jashari, D., "The Urban and Beyond in Latin America." Latin American Research Review, 2022.
- Interview with Cold War historian
- Jashari, D., "Interview with Tanya Harmer, Professor of History at the London School of Economics, on new Cold War history approaches and the Chilean coup and its aftermath." In Actuel Marx Intervenciones. LOM Ediciones, 2023.
Presentations and Events
Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center, Cornell University , "Chile 1973: Fifty Years Later" (October 17, 2024 - October 18, 2024)
Latin American Studies Association Conference, "Space and the Production of the Working Poor in Santiago, Chile" (June 15, 2024)
Green Teaching Summit; A Humanities-driven Interdisciplinary Summit, Minnowbrook Conference Center, "Mexico City’s Metropolitan Environment from the Aztecs to the Twentieth Century" (May 19, 2024)
Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies: Asheville, North Carolina, "Producing Urban Space: Architects, Urban Planners and Pobladores in 1970s Chile" (April 6, 2024)
American Historical Association Annual Meeting, "The 1980s Generation: Radical Militancy from Dictatorship to Democracy in Chile" (January 7, 2024)
Chile/Rio de la Plata Section, Conference on Latin American History, "Rethinking the Geography of the Southern Cone" (January 6, 2024)
Urban History Association Conference, "Dignified Homes for Dignified Men:’ Socialist Housing and Urban Poverty in Allende’s Chile, 1970-1973" (October 27, 2023)
Virtual symposium on "50 years since the Chilean coup", A Contracorriente: Una Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos, a journal of Latin American Studies, in Spanish, "Space and Revolutions" (April 21, 2023)
Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies Annual Meeting, "In Search of a More Just World: Chilean Social Movements in the Twentieth Century" (March 25, 2023)
Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies Annual Conference , "‘Ahora vamos p’arriba’: Socialist Housing and Urban Poverty in Allende’s Chile" (March 25, 2023)
North Carolina Conference on Latin American Studies (NC/CLAS), The Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University , "‘Good-for-Nothing Sons of the Left:’ The Lautaro Youth Movement in Chile’s Transition to Democracy" (February 17, 2023)
Chile/Rio de la Plata Section of the Conference on Latin American History, "New Approaches to Dictatorships and Human Rights" (January 7, 2023)
American Historical Association Annual Conference , "Urban Space and the Making of the Working Poor in Santiago, Chile during the Twentieth Century" (January 6, 2023)
Latin American and Latino Studies Center, Wake Forest University, "Mapping Dissent: Popular Christian Communities during Augusto Pinochet’s Dictatorship in Chile" (April 1, 2022)
Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, "Politics and the State in Twentieth Century Latin America" (March 11, 2022)
Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, "The Armed Left and the Reconfiguration of the Chilean State from Dictatorship to Democracy" (2022)
Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies, "Urban Segregation and Precarity from Dictatorship to Democracy in Chile, 1973-1994" (2022)
workshop with K-12 teachers as part of the “Preludes to Change: Conflict and Transformation in Latin America” webinar series focusing on NC Latin American Studies and NC World History high school standards, Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, UNC-Duke, "Chile: The Coup D’état of 1973" (September 22, 2021)
Jashari, D., Merino, R., Gutiérrez, J. P., Núcleo de Sociología del Cuerpo y las Emociones, University of Chile, "Taller de discusión y lectura: Teorías críticas y pensamiento crítico (Critical Theory and Critical Thinking Workshops)" (May, 2021 - August, 2021)
Labor and Working-Class History Association Annual Meeting, "Becoming ‘pobladores:’ Identity and Place Making in Santiago, Chile, 1872-1950" (2021)
Kellogg Institute for International Studies Works in Progress Seminar, University of Notre Dame, "The Via Crucis: Cartographies of Religious Protest and Political Dissent during Chile’s Dictatorship, 1973-1990" (2020)
Latin American History Working Group, University of Notre Dame, "The ‘Populacho’ Rises: Elite Visions of Urban Space and the Working Poor in Santiago, Chile" (2020)
Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, "Containing Unrest, Charting a Geography of Violence: Modernization and Authoritarianism in Chile’s Late Twentieth Century" (2019)
Jashari, D., Foss, S., Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies, "Mapping Latin America: Modernization Efforts and Cold War Ideologies in Rural and Urban Spaces" (2019)
American Historical Association Annual Meeting, "Remaking Urban Space, Refashioning Social Subjects: Neoliberal Urban Policies from Dictatorship to Democracy in Chile" (2019)
Critical Ethnic Studies Symposium, Indiana University, "The Apartheid of the Poor:’ The Politics of Space on the Chilean Road to Neoliberalism" (2019)
Latin American Studies Association Congress, "The Space of Utopia: Convergence between Christianity and Marxism in Allende’s Chile" (2019)
American Historical Association Annual Meeting, "Urban Restructuring and Spatial Regimes from Dictatorship to Democracy in Latin America" (2019)
Honors and Accolades
Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Humanities and Fine Arts, Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest (2021)
University Distinguished Ph.D. Dissertation Award in the Humanities and Fine Arts, Indiana University Bloomington (2021)
Richmond Brown Award for Graduate Student Scholarship, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS) (2020)