Department of History

Tiffany A. Thomas, Assistant Professor of History, joined Auburn University's history faculty in 2007. She received her Ph.D. in Latin American History with Distinction from the University of New Mexico, an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico, and she graduated Magna Cum Laude from Southwestern University with a B.A. in Art History and a B.A. in Spanish. At the University of New Mexico, Thomas worked as an Assistant Editor of the New Mexico Historical Review. Her work has been published in Cuban Studies, the New Mexico Historical Review, and the Encyclopedia of Women in World History.

Dr. Thomas' research focuses on the experience of women in Latin America, as part of a broader commitment to the study of the operation of power in Latin American society. Her current research on prostitution in Cuba explores the connection between state imperatives to control prostitute's lives, labors, and bodies, and the development of broader categories of appropriate behavior within a colonial and post-colonial setting. Her work reveals that ongoing negotiations between state agents, local citizens, and prostitutes over the form and function of Cuba's regulatory mechanism between 1840 and 1920 ultimately shaped, and were shaped by, broader competing discourses about citizenship, the legitimate exercise of state power, and the development of Cuba as a "modern" state.

Her research has been supported by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Grant, a CCWH Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Award, an American Historical Association Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere, a Latin American and Iberian Institute Ph.D. Fellowship, and a Dean's Dissertation Scholarship from the University of New Mexico.

Dr. Thomas teaches both undergraduate and graduate course at Auburn, covering Latin American history and historiography during the colonial and modern periods, the comparative history of women and gender, and world history.

• PhD, University of New Mexico
• MA in Latin American Studies, University of New Mexico
• BA in Art History and a BA in Spanish, Southwestern University

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