

Assistant Professor
Stokes Hall S309
Telephone: 617-552-1196
Email: angeles.picone@bc.edu
Nation-making, border regions, spatial history, and the environment.
I am historian of Modern Latin America specializing in the southern cone. I am interested in the intersection of nature and nation-making in border regions. Particularly, I am drawn to questions on how people experienced a shared sense of community through their spatial practices.
My current book project, Landscaping Patagonia: A Spatial and Environmental History of Nation-Making in the Chilean-Argentine Borderlands, examines how explorers, migrants, authorities, and visitors constructed their versions of ‘Chile’ and ‘Argentina’ in the Northern Patagonian Andes. I argue that between the 1890s and 1940s, these groups created shared versions of nationhood through regional, often cross-border, interpretations and transformations of the natural environment. This study shows how different actors – namely explorers, settlers, authorities, visitors, and bandits – sought to make Patagonia their own by transforming a collection of geographical sites into a landscape that evoked a shared past and a common future.
At Boston College, I teach courses on Modern Latin America, Spatial History, and Borderlands. Additionally, I am affiliated to the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities. My teaching frequently includes unessay assignments and digital projects, from board games to websites.
For the Fall 2022, I am also Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.
Settling Bariloche: Explorations, Violence, and Tourism in the Argentine Frontier, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Aug. 2022.
“Legitimizing and Resisting Spatial Violence in Southern Chile (1890s-1910s),” Historia Crítica, no. 82 (2021): 55-78.
“Comentario a ‘Orden y comercio. La construcción de estado y ciudadanía en la cordillera norpatagónica a principios del siglo XX’ by Jorge E. Muñoz Sougarretand Eva Muzzopappa, Araucanía-Norpatagonia II: La fluidez, lo disruptivo y el sentido de la frontera, edited by Brenda Matossian, Andrés Núñez, Paula Núñez, Marcela Tamagnini, and Carolina Odone Correa, 53–76. Aperturas. Viedma: Editorial UNRN, 2018.
“La idea de turismo en San Carlos de Bariloche a través de dos guías,” Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo, 22:2 (2013): 198-215.