Your Professor Wrote Your Textbook: Matthew Bereza’s Newly Published Book on the Americas

This summer, Dr. Matthew Bereza, psychology professor and chair of the Behavioral Sciences Division at St. John Fisher University, published a textbook in collaboration with peers Dr. Lisa Kahle-Piasecki and Dante Castro Solano.

The book, Common Ground: Understanding the Gap That Unites Latin America and the U.S., uses collective field research to examine the connections made between Latin America and the United States through their similarities and differences, and what it means to be an American. 

Kahle-Piasecki spearheaded the idea of turning their collective experiences into a book that delves into what it means to be an American, be it from the South or North continent. With support and funding through a travel research grant from Fisher, Bereza was able to return to what he calls “a very unknown corner of the Americas” that includes Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala for additional research to use in the book.

Bereza established a connection with Spanish-speaking communities well over two decades before he began the writing process of Common Ground in fall 2022. He has completed and published ethnographic research in the Basque Country of Spain, Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras, and is active with Spanish communities and social justice groups working to improve community relationships.

Bereza will use the textbook this fall in a research design lab, but he hopes that other professors will use it to teach lessons on pan-Americanism; an ideology that promotes unity and cooperation among countries in the Americas that connect us as one continent rather than dividing us into North and South. “My hope is that people teach in the spirit that we have much more [in] common than we believe,” he said.  “We have a much deeper history that goes right back to our original coming together in 1492.”

While most people in the U.S. would likely say the United States ‘started’ in 1776, Bereza described that for almost 300 years, Spain held advanced colonies in the Americas spanning as far north as the Canadian border. “We often overlook this and how tied we are to the rest of the Americas - 1492 is the year many natives say the World War began. We are all involved in that, across every country and island in the Americas and have roots in English, Spanish, Dutch, French, and Portuguese involvements,” he explained.

Bereza believes that Northerners have a responsibility to their American brothers and sisters through their shared hemisphere, cultures, languages, religions, and economies. “We are one of the largest markets in the world, but have some of the highest amounts of disparity in quality of life. I think we are all responsible for that. One way to act on this might be pan-Americanism, which is ‘all Americas’ across borders being able to move and trade freely.”

Bereza said the book also explores the concept of exposure, meaning that when one surrounds themselves with others who are different from them, a decline in stereotypical behavior typically follows. This would lead to a possible decrease in racism, sexism, and classism in the North. “We could start to see that there are other people in our hemisphere working on these things; other people who have had success,” he said.

Bereza hopes to plan a trip to El Salvador in 2025 for students in his 4990 Cardinal Experience course. The course would partner with Habitat for Humanity, teaching students about housing security and insecurity across the Americas. Students would study the housing security of El Salvador and compare it to the housing insecurity in economically-disadvantaged cities in the U.S. Trips of this nature offer the type of exposure Bereza encourages, and can provide students with a deeper understanding of their responsibility as northerners to other parts of the Americas.

Common Ground is published by Kendall Hunt Publishing Company and is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other major book retailers.

This article was written by Brooke Eastman, a senior media and communication major. Eastman currently serves as a Public Relations Writing Intern with the Marketing and Communications department at Fisher for the fall 2024 semester.