American historian

Aviva Chomsky (born April 20, 1957) is an American teacher, historian, author, and activist. She is a professor of history and the Coordinator of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at Salem State University in M*achusetts. She previously taught at Bates College in Maine and was a Research *ociate at Harvard University, where she specialized in Caribbean and Latin American history.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Career and education
• 3 Publications
  • 3.1 Books
  • 3.2 Chapters
• 4 References
• 5 External links

Early life

She is the eldest daughter of linguists Noam and Carol Chomsky. Her paternal grandfather, William Chomsky (1896–1977), was a Hebrew scholar at Gratz College, where she served as principal for many years.

Career and education

Between 1976 and 1977, Chomsky worked for the United Farm Workers union. She credited this experience with sparking her "interest in the Spanish language, in migrant workers and immigration, in labor history, in social movements and labor organizing, in multinationals and their workers, in how global economic forces affect individuals, and how people collectively organize for social change". At the University of California at Berkeley, she earned a B.A. in Spanish and Portuguese in 1982, an M.A. in history in 1985, and a Ph.D. in history in 1990. She began teaching at Bates College, and became an *ociate professor of history at Salem State College in 1997, the Coordinator of Latin American Studies in 1999, and a full professor in 2002.

Chomsky's book West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica 1870–1940 was awarded the 1997 Best Book Prize by the New England Council of Latin American Studies. It describes the history of the United Fruit Company, formed in 1899 from the merger of multiple U.S.-based companies that built railroads and cultivated bananas on the Atlantic Coast of Costa Rica. It also shows how the workers, including many Jamaicans of African descent, developed their own parallel socioeconomic system.

Chomsky has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants’ rights issues since the 1980s. She is a member of the North S* Colombia Solidarity Committee. Her articles on immigration rights have appeared in The Nation, HuffPost and TomDispatch, a project of The Nation Ins*ute, and she has delivered lectures across the world on labor rights and immigration rights.

Publications

Books

• Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration, Beacon Press, Boston M*achusetts. April 2021. ISBN:978-080705648-6
• Undo*ented: How Immigration Became Illegal, Beacon Press, Boston M*achusetts. 2014. ISBN:978-080700167-7
• A History of the Cuban Revolution, Wiley-Blackwell, New York, NY . Paperback. 224 pages. October 2010. ISBN:978-1-4051-8773-2
• Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Cl*. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina. 2008. ISBN:0-8223-4190-5
• The People Behind Colombian Coal/Bajo el manto del carbon, Aviva Chomsky, Garry Leech, Steve Striffler (Editors), 2007. ISBN:958-97995-5-8
• They Take Our Jobs! and 20 Other Myths About Immigration. Beacon Press, July 2007. Paperback: 236 pages . In English. (ISBN:978-0807041567).
• West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870–1940. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. ISBN:0-8071-1979-2
• Iden*y and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring People of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean, (Comparative and International Working-Cl* History), Aviva Chomsky and Aldo Lauria-Santiago (Editors), 1998. 404 pages. Duke University Press, Durham, North Caroline, (ISBN:978-0822322023)
• The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Pamela Maria Smorkaloff (Editors), Duke University Press, Durham, North Caroline, January 2004. (ISBN:978-0822331971).

Chapters

• The Dispossessed: Chronicles of the Desterrados of Colombia, Alfredo Molano, Haymarket Books, (ISBN:1-931859-17-5), 2005. (Foreword)
• The Profits of Extermination: How U.S. Corporate Power is Destroying Colombia, Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, Common Courage Press, (ISBN:1-56751-322-0), 2005. (Translation and introduction by Aviva Chomsky)
• Hidden Lives and Human Rights in the United States: Understanding the Controversies and Tragedies of Undo*ented Immigration, edited by Lois Ann Lorentzen, Praeger Press (ISBN:1440828474), 2014. (Economic Impact of Migrants)
• Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Darien J. Davis, Rowman & Littlefield, (ISBN:0742541312), 2007. (The Logic of Displacement: Afro-Colombians and the War in Colombia)
• Salem: Place, Myth and Memory, edited by Dane Morrison and Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Northeastern University Press, (ISBN:1555536506), 2004. (Salem as a Global City: 1850-2004)
• Iden*y and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean, edited by Aviva Chomsky and Lauria-Santiago, Duke University Press, (ISBN:0822322188) 1998. (Introduction and Laborers and Small-Holders in Costa Rica’s Mining Communities: 1900-1940)

References

External links

• Facebook page
• Articles
• Faculty profile at Salem State University
• Review of The Costa Rica Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Steven Palmer and Iván Molina, eds. Durham: Duke University Press, Durham North Caroline, November 2004
• Aviva Chomsky's web page at Jacksonville University

Filmography

• Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992)
• Last Party 2000 (2001)
• Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times (2002)
• Distorted Morality:– America's War on Terror? (2003)
• Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause (2003) (TV)
• Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land (2004)
• Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? (2013)

Family

• William Chomsky (father)
• Carol Chomsky (wife)
• Aviva Chomsky (daughter)