Miguel Angel Chavez
Historian of Science, Exploration, and Empire
Curriculum Vitae:
(Updated: May 2025)
Dissertation:
Note: the dissertation file is watermarked. For a non-watermarked version, please refer to the Vanderbilt Thesis & Dissertation collection here:
Ph.D. in History, Vanderbilt University
(2023).
M.A. in History, University of North Texas
(2015)
B.A. in History, University of North Texas
(2011)
Conference Presentations / Works in Progress
"The Rhetoric of Development: Imperial Geography and the Civilizing Mission in Africa, 1864-1900”
Midwestern Conference on British Studies, Elmhurst, IL.
“Violence as Pedagogy: Discipline in Victorian Exploratory Expeditions in Africa, 1840 to 1900”
History of Science Society Conference, Mérida, MX.
“’Colonial’ Science: John Brian Christopherson and Sudanese Knowledge in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan”
History of Science Society Conference, Chicago, IL.
“Professionalizing Science: British Geography, Africa, and the Exploration of the Nile”
History of Science Society Conference, Online
“Boxed them both most impartially:” Authority and Discipline in British Exploratory Missions in Africa, 1860-1900.”
North American Conference on British Studies, Atlanta.
“Slaves of the Desk”: Nile Exploratory Accounts as Masculine Escapism in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain”
Northeast Conference on British Studies, Online.
“The Echoes of Exploration: The legacy of Nile exploration on the Wellcome Laboratories in Khartoum”
Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science Conference,
New Orleans.
The Failed Explorer: John Petherick and Reputation in Nile Exploration - presented at the Ohio Valley History Conference in October 2018.
The Shifting Borders of Egypt - Master's Thesis, defended and revised in 2015.
Classical Ghosts: Greco-Roman Influences on Enlightenment Travel Writings in Ottoman Egypt - presented at the Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference in September 2015.
From Enlightened to Despot: The Shifting Orientalist Portrayals of Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt - presented at the Fifh Annual Texas A&M Graduate History Conference in Spring 2014.
“From Arabia Petraea to the Sinai: The Shifting British Portrayals of the Egyptian-Palestinian Border from the Victorian Era until the 1906 Aqaba Crisis” - presented at the Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference in September 2013.
Book Reviews
Imperial Gallows: Murder Violence and the Death Penalty in British Colonial Africa, c. 1915-60 by Stacey Hynd
On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration by Edward Armston-Sheret
H-Albion
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
Forthcoming!
Forthcoming!