Faculty and Staff
Adrian Burgos, Jr.
Associate Professor of History
Associate Professor Adrian Burgos, Jr., specializes in US Latino history, African American Studies, sport history, and urban history. His research is concerned with the intersections of race, nation, and culture between the United States and the Spanish-speaking Americas. In 2007, the University of California Press published his award-winning book, Playing America’s Game(s): Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line, that examines the impact of the incorporation of Latinos in US professional baseball had on baseball’s color line and racial understandings locally and transnationally. The Latin American Studies Association selected Playing America’s Game for its inaugural Latino/a Book Award in 2007, and the Society of American Baseball Researchers named it a Finalist for the Seymour Medal for the best baseball history or biography of 2007.
His current projects include: a biography of Alex Pompez entitled Pomp and His Circumstances: Alex Pompez’s Rise, Fall, and Redemption in Negro League Baseball and Harlem’s Numbers, a co-edited anthology (with Gina Pérez and Frank Guridy) Beyond the Barrio: Everyday Life in Latino America, a chapter in Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Róman edited anthology Afro-Latino Reader (Duke University Press), and an article in a special issue of Social Text focused on the African Diaspora. His academic articles have appeared in Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Journal of Negro History, and Centro: Journal of the Center of Puerto Rican Studies. In addition, he has contributed chapters to Latina/o Popular Culture and Mambo Montage. From 2001 through 2005 Burgos was the associate director of a research team awarded $250,000 to conduct a comprehensive study of African Americans in baseball history by the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2006 the group published Shades of Glory: the Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball for which he was a contributing author.