Jane M. Rausch

Jane Meyer Rausch is an American historian and professor emerita of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is known for her research on the Llanos Orientales region and for her studies of Colombia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Early life and education Rausch earned her B.A. in Spanish and history from DePauw University in 1962. She completed an M.A. in Ibero-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1964 and received her Ph.D. in comparative tropical history from the same institution in 1969. Her dissertation, Modernization and Educational Reform in Colombia, 1863–1886, examined nineteenth-century Colombian education in the era of federalism.

Academic career Rausch joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1969, initially as an instructor in history. She became assistant professor in 1971, associate professor in 1976, and full professor in 1984. She retired in 2010 and was named professor emerita.

In 1981 she was awarded the Conference on Latin American History’s Robertson Prize, and during the 1980s she was elected corresponding member of the Academia de Historia del Meta and honorary member of the Centro de Historia de Casanare. She was also nominated for the University of Massachusetts Distinguished Teaching Award in 1986.

In 2012 she was invited as a distinguished lecturer at the XVI Congreso Colombiano de Historia, and the following year she was a participant in the Coloquio Frontera y Territorio en las Ciencias Sociales y las Humanidades at the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí in Mexico. In June 2021, she was honored at the III Congreso Internacional hosted by the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica.

Research and scholarship Rausch’s research has focused on Colombian history, especially the Llanos Orientales, as well as comparative frontier regions in Latin America. Her early work, A Tropical Plains Frontier: The Llanos of Colombia, 1531–1831 (1984), established her reputation as a leading historian of the Colombian frontier. She followed this with The Llanos Frontier in Colombian History, 1830–1930 (1993) , and From Frontier Town to Metropolis: A History of Villavicencio, Colombia since 1842 (2007), which traced the evolution of Villavicencio from a remote settlement to a modern city.

Her later research broadened to Colombian and South American participation in global conflicts. She also published Santiago Pérez Triana: Colombian Man of Letters and Crusader for Hemispheric Unity (2017).

In addition to her monographs, Rausch has written extensively on Colombian sport, culture, and society, including studies of cycling, baseball, and changing perceptions of animals in Bogotá. Her articles have appeared in journals such as The Latin Americanist, Journal of Caribbean History, Revista Iberoamericana, and Revista de Estudios Colombianos.

Rausch co-edited several volumes that have become staples in Latin American history courses. With Lewis Hanke she edited People and Issues in Latin American History, volumes on both the colonial and national periods, published in multiple updated editions. With David Weber she co-edited Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin American History (1994), which helped define the field of comparative frontier studies. She also translated and edited works on European music and cultural history.

Selected publications Monographs

Edited Books

Articles