Rate My Professor Renata Keller

Renata Keller is an Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she joined in 2017 as Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. She serves as Undergraduate Advisor and teaches courses on modern Latin American history, Cuban history, the global Cold War, drugs and security in the Americas, historical research and writing, historiography of the Americas, and graduate research seminars on twentieth-century history. Prior to her appointment at UNR, Keller held the position of Assistant Professor of International Relations and Latin American Studies at Boston University from 2012 to 2017. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012 and 2009, respectively, along with dual B.A. degrees in History and Spanish from Arizona State University in 2004. Her research specializes in modern Latin America, the Cold War, international relations involving Cuba and Mexico, and drugs and security in the Americas, exploring connections across time and space in the Americas.

Keller is the author of two books: Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which won the 2016 SECOLAS Alfred B. Thomas Book Prize, and The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War (UNC Press, 2025). Key peer-reviewed articles include “The Latin American Missile Crisis” in Diplomatic History (2015), winner of the 2016 NECLAS Joseph T. Criscenti Best Article Prize; “Responsibility of the Great Ones: How the Organization of American States and the United Nations Helped Resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis” in Journal of Latin American Studies (2019); and “The Revolution Will Be Teletyped: Cuba’s Prensa Latina News Agency and the Cold War Contest Over Information” in Journal of Cold War Studies (2019), honorable mention for the 2020 SECOLAS Sturgis Leavitt Award. She has received research funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Philanthropic Educational Organization, Kluge Center at the U.S. Library of Congress, and American Philosophical Society. Keller serves as co-editor of the InterConnections: The Global Twentieth Century book series at UNC Press and co-produced the podcast “SECOLAS Presents: The Cuban Missile Crisis, An Audiodocumentary,” sponsored by the NEH and American Historical Association. Her public scholarship appears in outlets such as The Washington Post, Time, and The Conversation.