Mexican Studies

Mexican Studies

episodes

Interviews with scholar of Mexico about their new books

Alke Jenss, "Selective Security in the War on Drugs: The Coloniality of State Power in Colombia and Mexico" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

March 18, 2024

Selective Security in the War on Drugs

Alke Jenss
Hosted by Caleb Zakarin

Paramilitaries, crime, and tens of thousands of disappeared persons—the so-called war on drugs has perpetuated violence in Latin America, at times pre…

Thomas Mareite, "Conditional Freedom: Free Soil and Fugitive Slaves from the U.S. South to Mexico's Northeast, 1803-1861" (Brill, 2024)

March 13, 2024

Conditional Freedom

Thomas Mareite
Hosted by Katrina Anderson

While the literature on slave flight in nineteenth-century North America has commonly focused on fugitive slaves escaping to the U.S. North and Canada…

Diego Javier Luis, "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History" (Harvard UP, 2024)

March 5, 2024

The First Asians in the Americas

Diego Javier Luis
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Between 1565 and 1815, the so-called Manila galleons enjoyed a near-complete monopoly on transpacific trade between Spain’s Asian and American colonie…

Diego Javier Luis, "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History" (Harvard UP, 2024)

February 15, 2024

The First Asians in the Americas

Diego Javier Luis
Hosted by Nicholas Gordon

There’s a popular folk hero in Puebla, Mexico—Catarina de San Juan, who Mexicans hailed as a devoted religious figure after her death in 1688. She’s c…

Julia Ornelas-Higdon, "The Grapes of Conquest: Race, Labor, and the Industrialization of California Wine, 1769–1920" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

February 3, 2024

The Grapes of Conquest

Julia Ornelas-Higdon
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

California’s wine country conjures images of pastoral vineyards and cellars lined with oak barrels. As a mainstay of the state’s economy, California w…

Hugo Wong, "America's Lost Chinese: The Rise and Fall of a Migrant Family Dream" (Oxford UP, 2023)

December 14, 2023

America's Lost Chinese

Hugo Wong
Hosted by Nicholas Gordon

Like countless other migrants from China, Hugo Wong’s great-grandfathers–Wong Foon Chuck and Leung Hing–travel across the Pacific to make a life for t…

Our Lady of Guadalupe and Aztec True Myth

December 9, 2023

Our Lady of Guadalupe and Aztec True Myth

Joseph Gonzalez and Monique González

It turns out that our familiar narrative of the Virgin of Guadalupe, when Mary appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 and left her ima…

Genealogies of Modernity Episode 5: Picturing Race in Colonial Mexico

December 9, 2023

Picturing Race in Colonial Mexico

Hosted by Zachary Davis

Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention. But for this concept to gain power, its logic had to be spread – an…

William S. Kiser, "Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

November 23, 2023

Illusions of Empire

William S. Kiser
Hosted by Stephen Hausmann

The 19th-century Mexican-American borderlands were a complicated place. By the 1860s, Confederates, Americans, Mexicans, French, and various Native so…

Alan R. Sandstrom and Pamela E. Sandstrom, "Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: Nahua Sacred Journeys in Mexico's Huasteca Veracruzana" (UP of Colorado, 2023)

November 11, 2023

Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain

Alan R. Sandstrom and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom
Hosted by Nathan Moore

An ethnographic study based on decades of field research, Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: Nahua Sacred Journeys in Mexico's Huasteca Veracruzana (UP of…

Michael Welsh, "Big Bend National Park: Mexico, the United States, and a Borderland Ecosystem" (U Nevada Press, 2021)

October 22, 2023

Big Bend National Park

Michael Welsh
Hosted by Stephen Hausmann

National Parks are sites where politics, cultures, and ecology converge. University of Northern Colorado historian Michael Welsh argues that, at Big B…

Evan C. Rothera, "Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas: The United States, Mexico, and Argentina, 1860–1880" (LSU Press, 2022)

October 10, 2023

Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas

Evan C. Rothera
Hosted by Ethan Fredrick
Listen:

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, three violent national conflicts rocked the Americas: the Wars of Unification in Argentina, the War of t…

Edgar Garcia, "Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

September 16, 2023

Emergency

Edgar Garcia
Hosted by John Yargo

Today’s guest is Edgar Garcia. Garcia’s new book Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Emergency …

Gilberto Rosas, "Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

September 12, 2023

Unsettling

Gilberto Rosas
Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Listen:

On August 3, 2019, a far-right extremist committed a deadly mass shooting at a major shopping center in El Paso, Texas, a city on the border of the Un…

Erik Sherman, "Daybreak at Chavez Ravine: Fernandomania and the Remaking of the Los Angeles Dodgers" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

September 6, 2023

Daybreak at Chavez Ravine

Erik Sherman
Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
Listen:

Fernando Valenzuela was only twenty years old when Tom Lasorda chose him as the Dodgers' opening-day starting pitcher in 1981. Born in the remote Mexi…

Yanna Yannakakis, "Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico" (Duke UP, 2023)

September 4, 2023

Since Time Immemorial

Yanna Yannakakis

In Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico (Duke UP, 2023), Yanna Yannakakis traces the invention of Native custom, a legal ca…

Jaime M. Pensado, "Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico" (U California Press, 2023)

September 1, 2023

Love and Despair

Jaime M. Pensado
Hosted by Brad Wright
Listen:

Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico (U California Press, 2023) explores the multiple and m…

Christina Heatherton, "Arise!: Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution" (U California Press, 2022)

August 25, 2023

Arise!

Christina Heatherton
Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Listen:

The Mexican Revolution was a global event that catalyzed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Tracing the paths of figures like B…

Cindy McCulligh, "Sewer of Progress: Corporations, Institutionalized Corruption, and the Struggle for the Santiago River" (MIT Press, 2023)

August 6, 2023

Sewer of Progress

Cindy McCulligh
Hosted by Brad Wright

For almost two decades, the citizens of Western Mexico have called for a cleanup of the Santiago River, a water source so polluted it emanates an over…

Eric Van Young, "Stormy Passage: Mexico from Colony to Republic, 1750-1850" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

July 27, 2023

Stormy Passage

Eric Van Young
Hosted by Richard Grijalva
Listen:

In Stormy Passage: Mexico from Colony to Republic, 1750-1850 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Eric Van Young draws on four decades of extraordinary schol…