John K. Babb, Ph.D., M.A.

Biography 

Dr. John Babb was born and raised in Sioux Falls and received his primary and secondary education in the local Catholic school system. He earned a B.A. in history at Southern Oregon University. He earned a master's degree in social sciences at the University of Chicago with a thesis concerning US-Cuban relations during the civil war in Angola. He then earned a doctorate in history at Florida International University in 2016. Babb's doctoral research investigated the overlapping colonial histories of Spanish and North America in the making of the city of Miami. His work broadly concerns cultural history, and his dissertation thematically addresses issues of environmental change, Spanish revival architecture, the imperial dimension of aviation and ideological migration. He places emphasis on transnational historical approaches in his work, informed by study in both Latin American and U.S. historiographies. His dissertation, "The Viceroyalty of Miami: Colonial Nostalgia and the Making of an Imperial City," received institutional and financial support from FIU and the Digital Library of the Caribbean, and he is revising his dissertation in preparation for submission as a book manuscript. John teaches Environmental History, U.S. History and Western Civilization at Augustana.