Kenneth P. Serbin is an associate profess or history at the University of San Diego. He received his B.A. in history from Yale (1982) and his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego (1993). His research focuses on the history of the Catholic Church and social and reproductive issues and the relationship between religion and democracy in Brazil. His book Secret Dialogues: Church-State Relations, Torture, and Social Justice in Authoritarian Brazil was published in the prestigious Latin America Series of University of Pittsburgh Press (2000). A special revised Portuguese edition, Diálogos na sombra, appeared with Brazil’s top publisher, Companhia das Letras (2001), and received wide coverage in the Brazilian news and cultural media, including an appearance by Dr. Serbin on “Roda Viva,” Brazil’s most prestigious television interview program, which features world-renowned thinkers and leaders. In 2003 Diálogos won the Book Prize of the Brazil Section of the Latin American Studies Association in the category of best book on Brazil in Portuguese.

Dr. Serbin’s book Needs of the Heart: A Cultural and Social History of Brazil’s Clergy and Seminaries is forthcoming with University of Notre Dame press (2005). Dr. Serbin is also the author of “The Catholic Church, Religious Pluralism, and Democracy in Brazil,” a chapter in the key edited volume Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions, and Processes, also published by University of Pittsburgh Press (2000), as well as the co-author of an oral biography of one of Brazil’s most important bishops (2001). He has authored numerous other articles in books, journals, and the print press in both the United States and Brazil. He has given numerous television and print interviews on Brazilian politics in both he U.S. and Brazil. In 2002 he was invited to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington for a meeting of leading Brazilianist scholars. In 2001 he was the recipient of a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his current project on former revolutionaries and Catholic militants who opposed the Brazilian military regime.

Dr. Serbin is a strong proponent of Brazilian studies and the importance of Brazil in U.S.-Latin American relations. He has lived in Brazil for a total of more than six years and visited the country annually since 1986. He was a Fulbright Scholar there between 1988 and 1990 and began writing his dissertation there in 1991 with a grant from the Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities Program. In 1996 and 1997 he resided there again while on research leave from USD and with support from the university and the Social Science Research Council. Although an historian, he has written extensively on contemporary Brazilian issues and directed his scholarship to topics of relevance for Brazil’s development, for example, the application of Catholic social doctrine, the defense of human rights, and democratization.

Dr. Serbin is currently the co-chair of the Brazil Section of the Latin American Studies Association (March 2003 September 2004) and a member of the organizing committee of the History Thematic Group for BRASA’s upcoming Seventh International Conference. Dr. Serbin is a former fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame (spring 1992) and a research associate of the North-South Center at the University of Miami (1992-1993).

At USD Dr. Serbin was a founding member of the TransBorder Institute oversight committee (1994-1998) and reorganized the institute as its interim director (1998-2000). He also chaired the Internationalization of the Curriculum Committee (1998-2000). He teaches courses on colonial and modern Latin America, the history of Brazil, the history of religion in Latin America, Latin America through film, Mexico, and world civilization. He is currently preparing an honors course on the Jesuits and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart (spring 2005).