Rate My Professor Pablo Ben

Pablo Ben is an Associate Professor in the History Department at San Diego State University. Hailing from Argentina, he obtained his Licenciatura in Anthropology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 2001. He then pursued advanced studies at the University of Chicago, earning an M.A. in Latin American History in 2002 and a Ph.D. in the same field in 2009. His doctoral dissertation, titled “Male Sexuality, the Popular Classes and the State: Buenos Aires, 1880-1955,” laid the foundation for his scholarly career. Before joining SDSU as an Assistant Professor in September 2010, Ben held an Assistant Professor position at the University of Northern Iowa from August 2008 to June 2011. He also served as a Visiting Professor at Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in the summer of 2009 and at Universidad de Buenos Aires in the second semester of 2009, and as an Instructor at the University of Chicago from 2005 to 2008.

Ben's research centers on the history of sexuality spanning the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century, with a particular emphasis on Argentina, Latin America, and transnational comparisons. His work delves into the intersections of sexuality with mass migration, urbanization, popular culture, nation-state building, the history of science, and the evolving politics of gender and race. He examines phenomena such as the prostitution and same-sex sexuality booms in Buenos Aires during 1880-1930, comparing them to similar developments in global cities like Shanghai, New York, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Nairobi. More recent studies address the sexual revolution of the 1960s-1980s, pornography during democratic transitions, and the legalization of same-sex marriage in the Americas. Notable publications include “Dictatorial Rule and Sexual Politics in Argentina: The Case of the Frente de Liberación Homosexual, 1967-1976” (Hispanic American Historical Review, 2017, with Santiago Joaquín Insausti), “Sexual Comedy and Plebeian Masculinity in Buenos Aires, 1880-1930” (Journal of the History of Sexuality, 2007), “Global Modernity and Sexual Science: The Case of Male Homosexuality and Female Prostitution, 1880-1950” (in Global History of Sexual Science, 2017), and forthcoming “History of Sexuality in Buenos Aires, 1880-2021” (Cambridge World History of Sexualities, with S.J. Insausti). Ben has been awarded prestigious fellowships such as the Andrew W. Mellon Latin American History Fellowship (2003-2006), Hormel Dissertation Writing Fellowship (2007), and research grants from SDSU, UNI, and the Iberoamerikanisches Institut in Berlin (2006). He contributes to SDSU's LGBTQ Research Consortium, Center for War and Society, and other centers, enhancing scholarship in modern Latin American and global histories of sexuality.