Andra B. Chastain

Biography

Education

• PhD, Yale University, 2018
• MA, University of California, Berkeley, 2012
• BA, Reed College, 2008

Academic and Professional Interests

Chastain is a historian of modern Latin America with a focus on twentieth-century Chile and Mexico in a global context. Her research interests include urban and environmental history, the history of science and technology, the global Cold War, and political and cultural history. Her award-winning monograph, Chile Underground: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City (Yale University Press, 2024), examines the history of the largest metro system in South America, a major state infrastructure project that cuts across democracy and dictatorship. The Spanish translation is forthcoming with the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 2026. She is also the co-editor, with Timothy W. Lorek, of Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America’s Long Cold War (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, the PEO Foundation, the American Historical Association, and the Conference on Latin American History. She is a board member of the Global Urban History Project.

Chastain’s current research examines the history of urban air pollution in the Americas with case studies of Santiago, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. In 2025-26, she is a Fulbright-García Robles fellow in Mexico City at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

At WSU, Chastain regularly teaches Roots of Contemporary Issues, Introduction to Latin American History, Twentieth-Century Latin America, History of the Cold War, and the Seminar in History.

Chastain welcomes inquiries from students interested in graduate study in modern Latin American and world history, as well as students with thematic interests in urban and environmental history, political and cultural history, the history of science and technology, and the Cold War.

Publications

• Chile Underground: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City. Yale University Press, 2024.
• “Latin American Subways and Metro Systems.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.
• “Rethinking Basic Infrastructure: French Aid and Metro Development in Postwar Latin America,” Comparativ vol. 30, no. 1/2 (2020): 128–141. Special issue: “Transforming Cities: Urbanization and International Development in Africa and Latin America since 1945,” edited by Marc Frey, Sönke Kunkel, and Nancy Kwak.
• “‘A Shameful and Uncivilized Spectacle’: Taxibuses, Students, and the Conflicted Road to Deregulation in Pinochet’s Chile, 1975–1978,” Journal of Transport History 42, no. 2 (online first, December 2020), 1–19.
• “The Santiago Metro as Microcosm of Chile.” NACLA: North American Congress on Latin America (October 2019).
• Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America’s Long Cold War, co-editor with Timothy W. Lorek. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.
• “Planning the Santiago Metro in Cold War Chile,” in Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America’s Long Cold War. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020, 237–257.
• “Beyond Resistance: New Works on Urban Popular Politics in Latin America’s Informal Cities.” Journal of Urban History, vol. 43, no. 6, 960–967. 2017.
• “Francis Violich and the Rise and Fall of Urban Developmental Planning in Chile, 1956–1969.” Revista de Historia Iberoamericana, vol. 4, no. 2, 10–39. 2011.

Selected Honors and Awards

• 2025-26 Fulbright-García Robles Social Sciences and Humanities Award to Mexico.
• 2025 Best Book Award – Honorable Mention from the Urban History Association, for Chile Underground: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City.
• 2023 Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere – American Historical Association.
• 2020 Students’ Award for Teaching Excellence – Associated Students of Washington State University Vancouver
• 2019 Lewis Hanke Postdoctoral Prize – Conference on Latin American History
• 2019 John Scholes Transport History Research Prize – International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic, and Mobility
• 2018 Michael Katz Award for best dissertation in urban history, awarded by the Urban History Association
• 2018 Arthur and Mary Wright Prize for outstanding dissertation in the field of history outside the United States or Europe, Yale University
• 2016–17 P.E.O. Scholar Award
• 2014–15 Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship