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Department of History

Celso Thomas Castilho

Associate Professor of History
Director of The Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies

Celso Thomas Castilho is an associate professor of history, and director of CLACX (2021-24, 2025-present). He is the former president (2023-25) of the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH), the field’s oldest and largest society in the United States, and serves on the board of the Center Director’s Section of the Latin American Studies Association (2027-2028). 

Trained in Latin American history at UC Berkeley, Castilho’s current teaching and research centers on sports studies and the Latin American diaspora. His new project turns to the 1994 Men’s World Cup, reexamining this transformative event in U.S. soccer history through a focus on culture and politics. The study connects the key Latin American storylines that shaped the tournament on the field to the debates and activism that USA ’94 prompted within Latino communities off the field. Tentatively titled, Fútbol and Politics in the United States: A New History of the 1994 World Cup, Castilho situates USA ’94 as part of larger struggles over political representation, immigration, and media portrayal, drawing primarily on Spanish-language newspapers from Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Miami. A scholarly article called “La invasión mexicana” that probes the intersections between the World Cup and California’s Anti-Immigrant Prop 187 Campaign has been accepted by Latino Studies, and is forthcoming in early 2027. 

Castilho is also writing public-facing essays on fútbol, culture, and politics. His NACLA article put the “long shadow” of Latino activism from 1994 into conversation with the controversies surrounding the 2026 competition. The piece drew attention from national and international news and sporting outlets during the 2026 World Cup. He’s also written about the historical significance of the Mauricio Pochettino hire, the first Latin American coach to lead the U.S. Men’s National Team.  

Additionally, Castilho remains engaged in research on the African diaspora, slavery, and political history, his original areas of training. His articles, research monograph, 4 co-edited volumes/special issues over the last decade have spanned the areas of race and emancipation, the press and the cultural field, and political citizenship. Castilho’s first book, Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Political Citizenship (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), received three prizes, including the 2018 Bolton-Johnson Prize from the Conference of Latin American History for best book in Latin American history. 

From the book on abolition and political citizenship in Brazil, he turned to research the translations, adaptations, and theatrical performances of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Latin America to explore more broadly the contours of Blackness in public life; and to do so in a way that connects the histories of slavery and the cultural arena in the mid-nineteenth-century. Tentatively titled, The Latin American Repertoires of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the book highlights the newspaper editors, women schoolteachers, and dramaturges, including Afrodescendants, who stoked this phenomenon, in places, such as, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro. 

Specializations

Latin America and diaspora; Afro-Latin America; Sports; political and cultural; slavery and emancipation 

COURSES 

  • History of Brazil (undergraduate) 

  • Gender, Law, and Slave Emancipation in Latin America (undergraduate) 

  • Sport and Development (undergraduate and graduate) 

  • Fútbol-Soccer: Culture, Gender, and Diaspora (undergraduate) 

  • Methods and Practice of History (undergraduate) 

  • Research Seminar in Latin American History (graduate) 


Representative Publications

Selected Publications 

Books: 

  • Fútbol and Politics in the United States: A New History of the 1994 World Cup (completion projected, Dec 2027) 

  • The Latin American Repertoires of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Public Sphere in the Age of Slavery (in-progress) 

Edited Volumes & Special Issues: 

Journal Articles: 

  • Celso Thomas Castilho, “La invasión mexicana: Immigration, Political Strife, and a Latino Retelling of the 1994 World Cup.” Accepted. Forthcoming 2027 in Latino Studies. 

 

Public Facing 

Awards, Fellowships, and Professional Service 

  • 2026-27, Past President of the Conference of Latin American History 

  • 2023-25, President of the Conference of Latin American History 

  • 2021-23, Vice-President of the Conference of Latin American History 

  • 2020-2026, Residential Faculty at the Martha Rivers Ingram Commons 

  • 2018 Bolton-Johnson Book Prize from the Conference of Latin American History 

  • 2018 Warren Dean Book Prize from the Conference of Latin American History 

  • 2018 Roberto Reis Book Prize from the Brazilian Studies Association 

  • 2016-17 SEC Faculty Travel Program. Lectured at the University of Alabama. 

  • 2014 winner of the Kimberly S. Hanger Article Prize, awarded annually by the Latin American and Caribbean Section of the Southern Historical Association, for the article, “Performing Abolitionism, Enacting Citizenship: The Social Construction of Political Rights in 1880s Recife, Brazil.” 

  • 2011 Conference of Latin American History Award for Best Article: “Funding Freedom”.