Benjamin Keen

Benjamin Keen (1913–2002) was an American historian specializing in the history of colonial Latin America.

Keen received his PhD from Yale and taught at Amherst College, West Virginia University, and Jersey State College before joining Northern Illinois University in 1965. He retired in 1981. In 1985 he received the Distinguished Service Award of the Conference on Latin American History.

Keen was married to Betty from 1937 to her death in 1996. The couple raised four children. He died on November 1, 2002, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Selected works David Curtis DeForest and the Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947. Readings in Latin American Civilization: 1492 to the Present. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955. “The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities,” Hispanic American Historical Review 49, no. 4 (Nov. 1969): 703–19. “The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke’s ‘Modest Proposal,’” Hispanic American Historical Review 51, no. 2 (May 1971): 336–55. The Aztec Image in Western Thought. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1971. With Juan Friede. Bartolomé de Las Casas in History: Toward an Understanding of the Man and His Work. DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1971. “The Legacy of Bartolomé de Las Casas,” Ibero-Americana Pragensia 11 (1977): 57–67. With Mark Wasserman. A Short History of Latin America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. “Main Currents in United States Writings on Colonial Spanish America, 1884–1984,” Hispanic American Historical Review 65, no. 4 (Nov. 1985): 657– 82. Essays in the Intellectual History of Colonial Latin America. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998. With Keith Haynes. A History of Latin America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999 (sixth ed.). Latin American Civilization: History and Society, 1492 to the Present. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000 (seventh rev. ed.).