My  main preoccupation has been the perspective and actions taken by those struggling against colonialism or by those struggling against its legacy. I have pursued such themes in unpublished work on West Africa, as well as in my published work on Latin America.  Although I have pursued work on subaltern classes in Brazil (see the HAHR 1987 piece on the popular revolt of 1904 in Rio de Janeiro), I have devoted most of my work to the study of various Brazilian elite groups, particularly in their attempts to understand, shape, and dominate their society.  Initially (1978-87), this was done in analysis of elite culture and society in an urban setting in the period 1808-1914, and ranged from aspects of high culture (such as literature and architecture) to aspects of daily usages (domestic life, fashion, prostitution, clubs).

Since 1987, although I have continued to publish in this area and to make comparative analyses to Argentina and Buenos Aires,  I have pursued analysis of  Brazilian elite ideas and practice. I have been particularly interested in the study of conservative social and political thought and political history.  I have focused on problems central to Brazil's political tradition:  race, the use of history, and authoritarianism.  For this project, I began research for the era 1830-1940; publication has included studies of key figures in this area:  Joaquim Nabuco, Oliveira Viana, and Gilberto Freyre

As I began reading the published works on the earliest period of national history as part of this, however, I realized that there was far too little agreement on basic aspects of the political history.  I also found that many of the established conclusions or underlying assumptions in the literature did not jibe with the archival materials I had recovered in archival research in 1990-91. I decided I would have to study the political history of the Conservative Party, crucial to the traditions of conservative social and political thought central to the book I had been planning.  This decision took place between 1994 and 1995, and developed into a book-project  on the role of the Conservative Party with respect to slavery, society, and the state.  The first fruits of this research and analysis were published in three articles in 2001.   The book, The Party of Order: The Conservatives, the State, and Slavery in the Brazilian Monarchy, 1831-1871, was published by Stanford University Press (2006)

My next project follows up and complements the newly completed one; it concerns the political role of Afro-Brazilians in nineteenth-century Rio, with a particular focus on the abolitionist movement of 1878-1888.

Given the centrality of Amazonia to Latin American studies on the University of Florida campus, I have also prepared and taught a history of the region.  In preparing the course, I noted the lack of a good introductory survey of the region; the historiography tends to emphasize either the colonial era up to the expulsion of the Jesuits in mid eighteenth century or the era of the rubber boom, from about mid nineteenth century to the First World War.  There is also a good deal of recent material on the attempts to develop the region during and after the era of the  Military Regime.  I hope to write up a brief history that will be useful in classrooms and among the general public.