Kristin Dutcher Mann, a faculty member since January 2003, is a specialist in the history of Colonial Latin America and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. She teaches courses in Latin American History, History of the U.S. West, U.S.-Latin American Relations, History and Globalization of the Drug Trade, History with Objects, and the world and U.S. History survey courses. Dr. Mann holds a Ph.D. from Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. She is a former high school history and geography teacher, and she serves as the coordinator for the department’s social studies education program.
As part of her work with social studies teachers, both pre-professional and professional, she has collaborated on several grant projects in conjunction with the Little Rock School District and the Arkansas Council for the Social Studies. Dr. Mann worked on educational materials and professional development for educators related to the Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WWII Arkansas project since 2003. In 2018 she received a $20,000 grant from the Library of Congress to create the Arkansas Primary Source Sets project. Dr. Mann serves on the board of the Arkansas Council for the Social Studies and is the coordinator of the Central Arkansas National History Day competition. Dr. Mann was honored for her outstanding work in the community with UA Little Rock’s Faculty Excellence Award in Public Service in 2014. She recently won an award for her hybrid/flexible course development for both online and face-to-face students.
Dr. Mann’s current research interests include Colonial Latin American borderlands; bells, music, religion and identity, mission music and dance; Arkansas politician and businessman Mifflin W. Gibbs, as well as relations between Arkansas and Mexico. She was recently featured in a New York Times story and radio talk shows about her work with social studies education and teaching history in polarized times. She also writes about teaching history, including high-impact, public-facing student projects and projects in which students evaluate large language model-generated text and Wikipedia content.
Learn about Dr. Mann’s philosophy of teaching and research in this short video.
Select Publications
“Defining Time and Space: Franciscans and Bells in Northern New Spain,” The Franciscans in Colonial Mexico, ed. Thomas Cohen, David Rex Galindo and Jay Harrison. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2022.
“Musical Cultures of the Ibero-American Borderlands,” co-authored with Drew Edward Davies. Oxford Handbook of the Ibero-American Borderlands, ed. Danna Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
“The Latin American Musical Tradition,” Oxford Bibliographies Online. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0179.xml, October 2015.
“Cycles of Celebration: High Holy Days in the Franciscan Missions of Northern New Spain,” From La Florida to La California: Franciscan Evangelization in the American Borderlands, ed. Timothy J. Johnson and Gert Melville. Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2013.
The Power of Song: Music and Dance in the Mission Communities of Northern New Spain, 1590-1810. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.
“Christmas Celebrations in the Missions of Northern New Spain,” The Americas 66:3 (January 2010).
“Opus Dei – Jesuit and Franciscan Music in Mexico,” Religion in New Spain, eds. Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
