Letter from the Editor
Letter from the Editor in Chief
The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History is a dynamic, innovative, comprehensive, self-reflexive online research encyclopedia, which provides access to state-of-the-art research and also connects readers to the full range of internet resources for research and teaching, including audio, visual, video materials, digitized archives, and other primary sources.
Contributors to the ORE are professional historians, independent scholars as well as faculty at institutions around the world. Their essays provide a comprehensive overview of each subject and a brief historiography that will indicate how scholarship has been developing and locate their own contribution. Authors will update their entries in response to feedback from readers and new developments in the field.
The ORE is therefore not only a guide to scholarly work. It is an organized, interactive, ongoing effort to advance scholarship in the internet age, when historical understandings of Latin America are changing dramatically. By collecting scholarship on all dimensions of Latin American history, the ORE seeks to overcome the anachronistic, disorderly, territorial and disciplinary fragmentation of Latin American History.
The ORE of Latin American History seeks to improve the future as well as appreciate the past and present of historical studies. Articles will provide a careful selection of the most influential and useful primary and secondary materials, so that readers will gain a solid understanding of a given topic, learn to navigate thickets of specialization, and entertain new perspectives and approaches. Every article will be reviewed for accuracy and usefulness by peer reviewers, as well as by an editorial board of distinguished scholars. Authors will be able to revise and enlarge ORE essays as new sources and methods change the way history can be written.
As it evolves, the ORE of Latin American History will cover the entire sweep of Latin American history in its broadest definition, from prehistory to the present and into the future. By offering students and scholars a dynamic, engaging, self-reflexive, and expanding reference work, we strive to make the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History a model for encyclopedias in the digital age.
Ángela Vergara
Editor in Chief
