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Dr. Virginia Leonard

Professor

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Fulbright Award Winner

Leonard

Dr. Virginia Leonard is the Department's specialist on Latin American History. In addition to teaching upper-division courses on Latin America [History 340, 341, and 440(G)], Dr. Leonard teaches one of the Department's United States History surveys [History 106] and graduate seminars on Latin American history [History 530 and 531]. She has also taught at the Colegio Lincoln in Argentina.

Prof. Leonard's research focuses on relations between the United States and Latin America, and the suppression of the slave trade by the U.S. Navy after 1807. She spent her most recent sabbatical year in Washington, DC, Cuba, Spain, and England researching this topic and presenting a paper on "The Amistad Case (1839)" at Cambridge University in England. She has also done research in Argentina on church-state relations, and in Costa Rica on the American community. Among her many publications, most notable are her book, Politicians, Pupils, and Priests: Argentine Education since 1943 and her article in the Catholic Historical Review on "Education and the Church-State Clash in Argentina, 1945-55," which won the Peter Guilday Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association.

Dr. Leonard's other numerous awards and honors include a Fulbright Research Award (to conduct research in Argentina), an American Council of Learned Societies Travel Grant, an American Historical Association Fellowship for Women's Studies, and Organization of American States Fellowship to Argentina, a National Defense Education Act (NDEA) Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Fellowship. Dr. Leonard has served on the Fulbright National Screening Committee that selects graduate student scholars who plan to study in Latin America and is on the Executive Council of the Association of Third World Studies. She has been Senior Program Manager for the U.S. Department of Education's National Faculty Exchange, has guest lectured for the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department, has served as President of the Midwest Association for Latin American Studies, and has served on the Book Prize Committe for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. Most recently, Dr. Leonard was chosen as the Faculty Vice President of WIU's chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the national honorary society.

Prof. Leonard joined the Department in the Fall of 1977.

Dr. Leonard in the News