Mexico S New Cultural History

In this special issue of the Hispanic American Historical Review, the editors stepped outside the sometimes narrow confines of technical academic writing. They sought contributors who were willing to dive into an honest, open discussion of Mexico's cultural history. The result is a vigorous, complex, innovative, and occasionally humorous discussion of the pros and cons of a new cultural historical approach to Mexican history. All the contributors to this issue agree on the importance and relevance of a historical study of culture in its most inclusive sense. But there is much less consensus about the promise and potential of a "new cultural history" of Mexico and Latin America. While some of the contributors celebrate new interpretive and methodological advances, others express concern about the dangers of overinterpretation, untoward speculation, and the imposition of postmodernist concepts. Contributors and topics covered include: Susan Deans-Smith and Gilbert M. Joseph on the Arena of Dispute Eric Van Young on the New Cultural History William E. French on Cultural History of Nineteenth-Century Mexico Mary Kay Vaughan on Cultural Approaches to Peasant Politics in the Mexican Revolution Stephen Haber on Mexico's "New" Cultural History Florencia E. Mallon on Cycles of Revisionism Susan Migden Socolow on Putting the "Cult" in Culture Claudio Lomnitz on the Politics of the "New Cultural History of Mexico"

A Companion to Mexican History and Culture features 40 essays contributed by international scholars that incorporate ethnic, gender, environmental, and cultural studies to reveal a richer portrait of the Mexican experience, from the earliest peoples to the present. Features the latest scholarship on Mexican history and culture by an array of international scholars Essays are separated into sections on the four major chronological eras Discusses recent historical interpretations with critical historiographical sources, and is enriched by cultural analysis, ethnic and gender studies, and visual evidence The first volume to incorporate a discussion of popular music in political analysis This book is the receipient of the 2013 Michael C. Meyer Special Recognition Award from the Rocky Mountain Conference on Latin American Studies.

Essential essays from “one of the most prolific, provocative, and pre-eminent historians working in the field of Mexican and Latin-American history today” (Susan Deans-Smith, author of Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers). This collection brings together a group of important and influential essays on Mexican history and historiography by Eric Van Young, a leading scholar in the field. The essays, several of which appear here in English for the first time, are primarily historiographical; that is, they address the ways in which separate historical literatures have developed over time. They cover a wide range of topics: the historiography of the colonial and nineteenth-century Mexican and Latin American countryside; historical writing in English on the history of colonial Mexico; British, American, and Mexican historical writing on the Mexican Independence movement; the methodology of regional and cultural history; and the relationship of cultural to economic history. Some of the essays have been and will continue to be controversial, while others—for example, those on studies of the Mexican hacienda since 1980, on the theory and method of regional history, and on the “new cultural history” of Mexico—are widely considered classics of the genre. “Van Young is one of the two or three preeminent thinkers in the Mexican and Latin American field whose essays are of such pioneering and enduring value to warrant this kind of greatest hits collection. Not only does he cross fields and disciplines and integrate northern and southern intellectual currents, his essays are a pleasure to read and constitute a rare combination of analytical bite, erudition, and playfulness.” —Gilbert M. Joseph, Yale University

"Innovative study of the cultural legacy of the Mexican Revolution, using the story of rural schools. Focuses on Puebla and Sonora and the attempt by the central government to implement socialist education and to advance its nationalist agenda. Stresses the importance of negotiation among national and local leaders, teachers and peasants"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

During the twentieth century the Mexican government invested in the creation and promotion of a national culture more aggressively than any other state in the western hemisphere. Fragments of a Golden Age provides a comprehensive cultural history of the vibrant Mexico that emerged after 1940. Agreeing that the politics of culture and its production, dissemination, and reception constitute one of the keys to understanding this period of Mexican history, the volume’s contributors—historians, popular writers, anthropologists, artists, and cultural critics—weigh in on a wealth of topics from music, tourism, television, and sports to theatre, unions, art, and magazines. Each essay in its own way addresses the fragmentation of a cultural consensus that prevailed during the “golden age” of post–revolutionary prosperity, a time when the state was still successfully bolstering its power with narratives of modernization and shared community. Combining detailed case studies—both urban and rural—with larger discussions of political, economic, and cultural phenomena, the contributors take on such topics as the golden age of Mexican cinema, the death of Pedro Infante as a political spectacle, the 1951 “caravan of hunger,” professional wrestling, rock music, and soap operas. Fragments of a Golden Age will fill a particular gap for students of modern Mexico, Latin American studies, cultural studies, political economy, and twentieth century history, as well as to others concerned with rethinking the cultural dimensions of nationalism, imperialism, and modernization. Contributors. Steven J. Bachelor, Quetzil E. Castañeda, Seth Fein, Alison Greene, Omar Hernández, Jis & Trino, Gilbert M. Joseph, Heather Levi, Rubén Martínez, Emile McAnany, John Mraz, Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Elena Poniatowska, Anne Rubenstein, Alex Saragoza, Arthur Schmidt, Mary Kay Vaughan, Eric Zolov

There has always been an important visual element to the construction and questioning of national identity in post-Independence Mexico, though one that has not always been given its due, outside of the celebrated and much-studied muralists. Ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present – from the vogue for the picturesque, illustrated periodicals and the influential writings of Altamirano to a wealth of twentieth-century graphic artists, filmmakers and photographers – this book re-examines the complex variety of ways in which that visual element has operated. In particular, it looks at the ways in which discourses concerning ethnicity and cultural hybridity have been echoed and transformed in Mexican visual culture, resulting in fields of visual discourse which are eclectic and increasingly self-reflexive.

DIVThe first cultural history of post-1940s Mexico to relate issues of representation and meaning to questions of power; it includes essays on popular music, unions, TV, tourism, cinema, wrestling, and illustrated magazines./div

In 129 articles, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mexican History and Culture provides a compendium of Mexico's historical experience. An international group of authors that includes leading Mexican scholars examines politics, economics, biography, environment, gender, culture, and digital resources for the study of Mexican history.