Roberta Marx Delson

Roberta (Bobbie) Marx Delson, Ph.D. died suddenly February 11th, just months short of her 80th birthday. A leading scholar of Latin American history and beloved professor at several universities, she was also a loving wife, mother and mother-in-law. Roberta grew up in Middle Village, Queens, attended Syracuse University (elected to Phi Beta Kappa) and earned advanced degrees at Columbia University, where she met her husband of 57 years, Eric Delson. She received an MA in Anthropology, a Certificate in Latin American Studies and a Ph.D. in history, with a dissertation on urbanization in colonial Brazil. She taught at Rutgers-Newark, Princeton, the US Merchant Marine Academy and Drew University, where she was named Adjunct Professor. She was appointed a Research Associate in Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History AMNH), a position she held with pride until now. She was a long-time member of the Columbia University Seminar on Brazil, which she co-directed for many years. Among her many publications (showing the range of her interests) are: New Towns for Colonial Brazil: Spatial and Social Planning of the Eighteenth Century (translated into Portuguese as Novas Vilas para o Brasil-Colônia; Readings in Caribbean History and Economics: An Introduction to the Region (edited collection); Conservation tendencies in colonial and imperial Brazil: an alternative perspective on man-land relationships; Beyond imperial domination and resistance: extrapolating the Late Colonial Amazonian cultural landscape from the visual record; 'The Bullet and the Crust': A World War I Exhibition on Nutrition and Food Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History; & Some theoretical reflections on indigenous dress in Colonial Brazil. Her newest (and final) project is a book-length treatment of the multifarious roles of curators and other staff of the AMNH during World War I, which will be published posthumously by Springer Science. Roberta is survived by her husband, son William, daughter-in-law Lisa and members of her extended family across the US.

A chapel service for Roberta will be held on Thursday - February 13, 2025 at 12:00 PM at Riverside-Nassau North Chapels, 55 North Station Plaza, Great Neck, NY 11021.

Following the chapel service will be a committal service at Riverside Cemetery - 12 Market St, Saddle Brook, NJ 07663.