Antonio Sotomayor

Biography

Dr. Antonio Sotomayor is an associate professor, historian, and librarian of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also hold faculty appointments in the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, and Recreation, Sport, and Tourism, and is an affiliated faculty member at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Illinois. His research revolves around issues of identity/cultural politics, nationalism, international relations, religion, hegemony, and U.S.-Latin American relations through the window of sport. His book, The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), studies the role that the Olympic movement played in Puerto Rican construction of national identity, in the development of an autonomist political culture, and in Puerto Rican agency in international politics. In 2017 it won the José Toribio Medina book award from the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), the main association for Latin American librarians. He is a coeditor, with César R. Torres, of Olimpismo: The Olympic Movement in the Making of Latin America and the Caribbean, featured in the book series Sport, Culture, and Society from the University of Arkansas Press. His work appears in journals such as The Latin Americanist, Hispania Nova, The Americas, Caribbean Studies, and The International Journal of the History of Sport, among others. His next book project studies the intersections of religion, imperialism, and sport through the YMCA in Puerto Rico and Cuba (1898-1950s).

As a librarian, he directs the Latin American and Caribbean Studies collection at the University of Illinois. With close to one million volumes and numerous specialized databases, the collection is considered among the best in the nation. He oversee all aspects related to Latin America and the Caribbean at the University Library including collection development, reference, instruction, serial management, and offer specialized research consultations. His main interests at the library include in depth research consultations, collection development, and liaison work with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies. He is the Director of the Digital Library of Latin American and Caribbean Sport (DLLACS). He also Directs the Conde de Montemar Letters, 1761-1799 project, which provides access to a unique collection of 18th century letters from Peru and Madrid.