Seminar in Latin American History
Fall 2013
This course celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. We will read some basic texts on the revolution, as well as a number of historical monographs that examine the history of the post-revolutionary state and that reflect recent developments in the historiography of the revolution. The assigned texts include older social and political histories of the revolution, as well as more recent cultural and "new" political histories. In addition, we will examine some important cultural texts produced by the revolution, from novels to art, music, and film. The assigned texts represent different interpretations of the revolution. They take different approaches to answering the basic question that will concern us during the semester: was the revolution a revolution? If so, what kind of revolution was it? Bourgeois? Socialist? Nationalist? Reformist? Was the Mexican revolution a peasant revolution? A workers' revolution? What role did women and indigenous people play in the revolution? What impact did the revolution have on these different groups? Finally, we will look at the history of post-revolutionary state making. What kind of economy, society, and state were built following the revolution? What caused the revolutionary crisis of the 1960s? The 1990s? Students will write a long historiographical essay (20-25 pages) on a topic related to the questions raised by the assigned readings.
