Dr. Parker is now retired from teaching, but continues to research, write, and supervise current graduate students. A social and socio-legal historian of urban South America, he remains best known for his research on the middle class. But he also wrote a book about the duel in Uruguay as a parallel system of law, as well as publishing articles and book chapters on public health, housing, and labor. His current SSHRC-funded research examines how experts and activist intellectuals in late 19th- and early 20th-century Spain, Argentina, Chile, and Peru conceptualized their countries' urban social problems in the mirror of global comparison.
The Pen, the Sword, and the Law: Dueling and Democracy in Uruguay
Latin America's Middle Class: Unsettled Debates and New Histories
The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society, 1900-1950
Chapters in Books
- "Taxonomy, Identity, Mode of Being, or Political Project? Epistemologies of 'Middle Class' in Latin America since 1948." In Mario Barbosa Cruz, A. Ricardo López-Pedreros and Claudia Stern, editors, Middle Classes in Latin America: Subjectivities, Practices, and Genealogies. New York and London: Routledge, 2022: 384-404.
- Spanish translation in Clases medias en América Latina II: Guerra fria, neoliberalismo y movilizaciones sociales. Bogotá/México: Universidad del Rosario/UAM Cuajimalpa, 2023 (ISBN 978-958-500-095-7): 331-370.
- "An Introduction to José Carlos Mariátegui's 'The Anti-Imperialist Perspective' (1928)." In Aesthetics and Politics in the Global South. Ed. J. Daniel Elam. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Bloomsbury Philosophy Library. Web. 26 Apr. 2023. <DOI 10.5040/9781350302587>
- “Asymmetric Globality and South American Narratives of Bourgeois Failure.” In Christof Dejung, David Motadel, and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019: 275-294.
- “Siúticos, Huachafos, Cursis, Arribistas and Gente de Medio Pelo: Social Climbers and the Representation of Class in Chile and Peru, 1860-1930.” In A. Ricardo López and Barbara Weinstein, eds., The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012: 335-354.
- "Gentlemanly Responsibility and Insults of a Woman: Dueling and the Unwritten Rules of Public Life in Uruguay, 1860-1920." In Katherine Bliss and William French, eds., Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America Since Independence. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007: 109-132.
- "Civilizing the City of Kings: Hygiene and Housing in Lima." In Ronn F. Pineo and James A. Baer, eds., Cities of Hope: People, Protests, and Progress in Urbanizing Latin America, 1870-1930. Boulder, Westview Press, 1998: 153-178.
- "Los pobres de la clase media: estilo de vida, consumo, e identidad en una ciudad tradicional." In Aldo Panfichi H. and Felipe Portocarrero S., eds., Mundos interiores: Lima 1850-1950. Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, 1995: 161-185.
Journal Articles
- “Honor Ideology, Dueling Culture, and Judicial Lies in 1920s Uruguay,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, August 2016.
- “The All-Meaning Middle and the Alchemy of Class,” EIAL: Estudios Interdiscipinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 25:2 (Dec. 2014): 9-29.
- "Middle-Class Mobilization and the Language of Orders in Urban Latin America: From Caste to Category in Early Twentieth-Century Lima," Journal of Urban History 31:3 (March 2005): 367-381.
- "Law, Honor, and Impunity in Spanish America: The Debate over Dueling, 1870-1920." Law and History Review 19:2 (Summer 2001): 311-341.
- "Discursos, identidades, y la invención histórica de la clase media peruana," Debates en Sociología 22 (1997): 99-112. DOI:
- "Peruvian Politics and the Eight-Hour Day: Rethinking the 1919 General Strike." Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire 30: 3 (Dec. 1995): 417-438.
- "White-Collar Lima, 1910-1929: Commercial Employees and the Rise of the Peruvian Middle Class." Hispanic American Historical Review 72:1 (Feb. 1992): 47-72.
Media

- "The Duel of Law," History Today, Volume 74 issue 11 (November 2024), 28-39.
- "Why Dueling was legal in Uruguay from 1920 to 1992," talk at Concordia University, March 10, 2023,
- "Studying the Middle Class in Lima as the Wall Fell in Berlin: A Historian's Mini-Memoir." In ReVista: the Harvard Review of Latin America.
- History Department Teaching Award, 鶹վ, 2019.
- Principal's Teaching Award for Promoting Student Inquiry, 鶹վ, 2018.
- James A. Robertson Prize for the article "White-Collar Lima," Conference on Latin American History.
Dr. Parker is no longer taking on new graduate supervisions, but is committed to seeing his current students through to completion.