Email: lpang@mines.edu
Bio
Laura Jarnagin Pang retired from the Colorado School of Mines as of December 31, 2008. She was the Director of the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies and an Associate Professor. At Colorado School of Mines since 1986, Dr. Pang was initially involved in internationalizing engineering education with a Comprehensive Grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) of the U.S. Department of Education, the first project with an international focus funded by that entity. In conjunction with her husband, Dr. Eul-Soo Pang, that effort later evolved into an undergraduate minor in International Political Economy in the early 1990s and, as of September 2005, into a Master of International Political Economy of Resources (MIPER). These are among the very few international engineering programs based in the social sciences and designed with engineers and applied scientists in mind, especially those planning careers in the natural resources industries. In addition to her scholarly interests (see below), Dr. Pang has spent many years interfacing with the international mining and petroleum industries and industry associations (including Newmont Mining, the former Cyprus Minerals, International Zinc Association, and the former Conoco) and has contributed to mining sector development in Argentina and Peru. Dr. Pang holds a Ph.D. in Latin American History with specialization in nineteenth-century Brazilian socio-economic history (Vanderbilt, 1981), an M.A. in Latin American Studies (Vanderbilt, 1977), and a B.A. in International Affairs (University of Colorado at Boulder, 1973). She teaches courses on Latin American development, hemispheric integration in the Americas, and the International Political Economy of Latin America.
Courses taught
LAIS 335 International Political Economy of Latin America
LAIS 435 Latin American Development
LAIS 436 Hemispheric Integration in the Americas
LAIS 535 Latin American Development
LAIS 536 Hemispheric Integration in the Americas
Scholarship
Dr. Pang's recent and current scholarship focuses on the evolution of capitalism in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world as revealed through transnational kinship and merchant networks. She has recently completed a book entitled A Confluence of Transatlantic Networks: Elites, Capitalism, and Confederate Migration to Brazil. This study in Atlantic world history examines the qualitative nature of capitalism’s processes through the lens of social networks. The book demonstrates how portions of interconnected trust-based kinship, business, and ideational transatlantic networks evolved over roughly a century and a half and eventually converged to engender, promote, and facilitate the migration of southern elites to Brazil in the post–Civil War era. Placing that migration in the context of the Atlantic world sharpens our understanding of the transborder dynamic of such mainstream nineteenth-century historical currents as international commerce, liberalism, Protestantism, and Freemasonry. The manifestation of these transatlantic forces as found in Brazil at midcentury provided disaffected Confederates with a propitious environment in which to try to re-create a cherished lifestyle. University of Alabama Press, forthcoming, 2008.