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Márquez-Osuna, Angélica
About
Angélica Márquez-Osuna is an Assistant Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. Her research and courses focus on Latin American history.
Márquez-Osuna holds a PhD in History of Science from Harvard University. She earned an MA in History from University of California Santa Barbara, and an MA in Anthropological Sciences from Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (México). She received her BA in Communication Studies from ITESO University (México).
Márquez-Osuna’s first book project, ArcHives of Persistence. The History of Beekeeping in Tropical Americas, is an environmental history that reconstructs how bees have thrived, declined, and endured in the Americas and the active role beekeepers have played in these processes. It focuses on the case of the Yucatán Peninsula, México, and its connections with Florida and the Caribbean. This book explores how and why, after three centuries of experimentation in the Americas, the introduced honeybee has become the most widespread bee on the continent, and the consequences of industrial beekeeping in tropical environments. ArcHives of Persistence offers an innovative perspective on animal studies and contributes to debates on environmental change, the unfixed role of species in agricultural systems, and tropical commodity histories.
Before coming to Loyola, Márquez-Osuna was a 2023-2024 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Weatherhead Scholars Program at Harvard University. Her research has been supported by several grants and awards, including the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Plett Historical Research Foundation, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University (DRCLAS), and UC MEXUS – CONACYT (University of California Institute for México and the United States – CONACYT).
Her dissertation “Innovation in the Tropics: The Persistence of Beekeeping Knowledge in the Yucatan Peninsula, 1780-1950” (Harvard, 2023) received the 2024 Gilbert Fite Dissertation Award from the Agricultural History Society.
Research Interests
Environmental history, animal studies, agrarian studies, tropical commodities, and global history.
Courses Taught
History 210. Introduction to Latin American History
History 300. Topics in World History: Cultivating Modernity in Latin America
Selected Publications
Articles
“Beekeeping from the Southern Frontier: The Yucatán Peninsula’s Industrious Bee and the Birth of Modern Apiculture in the 19th century,” Agricultural History, February 2024. https://read.dukeupress.edu/agricultural-history/article/98/1/23/386138/Beekeeping-from-the-SouthThe-Yucatan-Peninsula-s?guestAccessKey=d2e0edbf-8098-4746-95c3-4867df21de50
“Colmenas en expansión: la historia de la apicultura moderna en la frontera tropical durante la primera mitad del siglo XX,” Istor, special issue, June 2024. http://ecos.cide.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/02-Istor-94-Angelica-Marquez-Osuna-pp-9-29.pdf
“A Journey to the Universe of Bees: From the Archives to the Fields,” ReVista (Cambridge), 22(2), Winter 2023, 1-7. http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/scholarly-journals/journey-universe-bees/docview/2785662820/se-2
Book chapter
“Revolución en la colmena: la llegada de la abeja con aguijón a la Península de Yucatán y el Nacimiento de la apicultura tropical en el siglo XX,” in México Revolucionario, Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revoluciones de México and Colegio Mexiquense, June 2024.