Theresa Ventura, PhD

Pronouns: She/Her

Associate Professor, History

Contact information

Email:

theresa.ventura@concordia.ca

Availability:

Tuesdays 1-3:00 pm

Biography

Theresa Ventura holds an MA and PhD in History from Columbia University and a BA in History and women's studies from Brooklyn College. Her research draws together the histories of United States foreign relations, medicine, agriculture, and the environment. Her current manuscript, tentatively titled Growing Empire: Nature and Power in the American Colonial Philippines, investigates American attempts to recast rural life and agricultural production in the Philippines, then the United States' most populous formal colony, and considers the impact of this project on Philippines politics, health, and nature.

Education

BA, Brooklyn College, MA, Ph.D., Columbia University

Publications

Articles & Book Chapters

"Consider the Coconut: Scientific Agriculture and the Racialization of Risk in the American Colonial Philippines, Journal of Transnational American Studies 13:1 (2022), 45-67.
http://doi.org/10.5070/T813158137

"A Drought So Extraordinary: The 1911 ENSO and Disaster Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines," in Philip Gooding, ed., Droughts, Floods, and Global Climatic Anomalies in the Indian Ocean World (2022). Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies.
https://rdcu.be/cOnRU

"I Am Already Annexed: Ramon Reyes Lala and the Crafting of 'Philippine' Advocacy for American Empire," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (July 2020). https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781420000092

"Prison, plantation, and peninsula: colonial knowledge and experimental technique in the post-war Bataan Rice Enrichment Project, 1910–1950," History and Technology, 35:3 (Jan 2020), pp. 293-315.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07341512.2019.1680153

"From Small Farms to Progressive Plantations: The Trajectory of Land Reform in the American Colonial Philippines, 1900-1916," Agricultural History (Winter 2016), pp. 459-483.

"Medicalizing Gutom: Hunger, Diet, and Beriberi during the American Period," Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 63:1 (March 2015), pp. 39-69.

Reviews

Review of Yoshiko Nagano, State and finance in the Philippines, 1898-1941: the mismanagement of an American colony for Economic History Review (May 2016).

Research activities

Current Major Grants

FRQSC, L'Empire Reconstitue: les Pratiques de Developpement des Americains aux Philippines de 1898 a 1946, September 2015-March 2018

Participation activities

Select Conferences, Workshops, and Talks

"'The Magic Liquid that Guarantees the Life of the Infant': Breast Milk as Food and Medicine in the Philippines, 1880-1924," Association for Asian Studies, Seattle, WA, March 31-April 3, 2016

“Colonial Land Reform and Inequality in the American Colonial Philippines,” Political Economy Seminar, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, November 17, 2014

“Progressive Plantations: Visions of Development of Philippine Friar Lands,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 2014

“Who Cured Beriberi? What an American Historian Learned from Ileto,”Historiography and Nation since Pasyon and Revolution: Conference in Honor of Professor Reynaldo C. Ileto, Manila,Philippines, February 8-9, 2013

“The Malnourished Tropics: Beriberi, Nutrition, and the Remapping of Monsoon Asia,” Anatomies of Knowledge: Medicine. Science, and Health in Asia Workshop, Social Science Research Council Inter-Asia Conference, Hong Kong,June 6-8, 2012

“Market Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and Natural Resource Management,” The Library of Congress, Washington DC, October 15, 2011

Teaching activities

Courses

Winter 2025

HIST 253 X
History of the United States since the Civil War Era

This course is a survey of United States history from the end of the Civil War to roughly 2001. It tracks the county's development from an agricultural nation to an industrial world power, and a post-industrial consuming nation. It asks how contests for power among different classes and groups animated US political, economic, and cultural development. Thematically, we pay close attention to changing definitions of freedom, experiences of citizenship, and expressions of nationalism. Chronologically, we cover watershed moments in US history, from emancipation & Reconstruction, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the Great Depression & Two World Wars, the Cold War, to the social and political realignments of the post-WWII era.

HIST 601
MA Thesis Writing Seminar

This course is designed to help MA students conceptualize their master's theses and contemplate - in a community of their peers - the joys and challenges of the historical craft. This class is meant to provide a welcoming space for all of you to think through your MA projects and build a solid foundation for researching, writing, and defence of your thesis over the next year.