Professor Casey Lurtz was interviewed for Faculty Focus on JHU Arts & Sciences Weekly (September 2022).

Describe your primary research or scholarship, and tell us what is most exciting about your current project.

My book in progress, titled From Enlightenment to Development: The Idea of Economic Growth in 19th-Century Latin America, investigates the administrative state building projects of newly independent Latin America in relation to the emergence of the 20th-century developmental state. How did these nations, some of the first in the world to throw off colonialism, imagine and pursue a place for themselves in the world and how did their practices, aspirations, and experiments influence what came to be called development, especially after World War II? While a lot of this ends up being about the nuts and bolts of things like legal codes and censuses and infrastructure, I’m also interested in the ways in which it required a rethinking of the environment and its relation to the state.

Share a best practice or tip for successful teaching or mentoring.

In the midst of COVID and online teaching, I was lucky enough to get to teach a new kind of class we’re offering in history, what we’re calling a history lab. These classes involve undergraduates in faculty research projects and provide students and faculty a space to experiment and collaborate. It’s been one of the best things to happen to my teaching and has really cemented for me the value of involving students in establishing the goals for the class, figuring out the kind of pedagogy that best suits those goals, and bringing other experts into the class to facilitate all of us learning together. Thinking of students as collaborators and setting myself up to learn alongside them has been incredibly fruitful for both my teaching and research. Also, our librarians are fantastic, and we should all be incorporating them into our teaching more.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I really enjoy making things—baking, cooking, sewing, knitting. It’s great to have hobbies that produce tangible results in a short time, unlike my historical research. I also have a toddler and spend a lot of time exploring our neighborhood and regional parks with her.