Assistant Professor
Department of History
St. John Hall, Room 244 G
8000 Utopia Parkway
Queens, NY 11439
(718) 990-8014
quintana@stjohns.edu
Educational Background
Ph.D., 2007, The Graduate Center of the City University of New
York, Latin American History
M.A., 2004, Hunter College, CUNY, Latin American History
B.A., 1993, UPAEP, Puebla, Mexico, Architecture
Profile
Alejandro Quintana is assistant professor of history at St.
John's University since 2008. He received his Ph.D. in
history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
in 2007. Before joining St. John's University, he was a
visiting professor at Connecticut College. His academic interests
include the cultural legacies of authoritarianism, nationalism,
sovereignty, state formation, and democratic processes in
nineteenth and twentieth century Latin America, especially
Mexico. In 2010 he published Maximino Ávila
Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and
Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico. The book was
translated into Spanish and published in Mexico the following year
as: Maximino Ávila Camacho y el Estado unipartidista: La
domesticación de caudillos y caciques en el México
posrevolucionario. In 2012 he published Francisco Villa:
a Biography, as part of Greenwood’s biographies series.
He is currently working on a new research project that will analyze
issues of state formation and national identity in seventeenth
century New Spain. Prof. Quintana's pedagogical approach is
based on the Writing Across the Curriculum movement, which uses a
variety of pedagogical techniques to help students understand
course materials, enhance their reading and writing abilities and
improve critical thinking.