Academic interests

  • 20th-Century Mexico, history of immigration/emigration/return migration, Bracero Program, comparative labor and working-class history, U.S.-Latin American relations.
  • Current research projects: 1) Forging an Emigrant Heartland: Labor Migrations and Return Migration in 20th Century Mexico;
  • 2)Workers, Unions, and State Labor Policy in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (1940-1978);
  • 3) Peaceful Revolutions: The US's Alliance for Progress program in Chile and Brazil

Teaching

  • History of the Americas: a) Latin America: Conquest and Empire (F341), b) Latin America: Evolution and Revolution (F342), c) Modern Mexico (F346), d) US-Latin American Relations (F347), e) Latinos in the USA (A352), f) Comparative Native American History (H425)
  • Perspectives on the World Before 1800 (H108) and Since 1800 (H109)
  • Introduction to International Studies (I100) and International Studies Senior Research Seminar (I400)

Awards

  • New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Grant (Indiana University, 2013-2014)
  • Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Grant (US Dept. of Education, 2007)
  • President's Arts and Humanities Initiative (Indiana University, 2005)
  • Hemphill/Gilmore University Fellowship (University of Texas, 1995-96)
  • Fulbright-Garcia Robles Dissertation Research Fellowship (US State Dept., Mexican Foreign Ministry, 1994-95)

Publications

Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism, and Revolution in Mexico, 1890-1950  (Cambridge University Press, 2003; paperback, 2006; Spanish translation published by Fonda Editorial de Nuevo Leon, 2009)

"The Golden Age of Charrismo: Workers, Braceros, and the Political Machinery of Post-Revolutionary Mexico," in La Dictablanda: Politics, Work, and Culture in Mexico, Gillingham and Smith, eds. (Duke University Press, 2015)

“The Bracero Program, 1942-1964,” in Beyond the Border: The History of Mexican-U.S. Migration, Mark Overmyer-Velásquez, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2011)

“Patronage and Progress: The Bracero Program from the Perspective of Mexico,” in Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History, Leon Fink, et al., eds. (Oxford University Press, 2011)

“‘How Can We Speak of Democracy in Mexico?’: Workers and Organized Labor in the Cárdenas and Echeverría Years,” in Men of the People: The Presidencies of Lázaro Cárdenas and Luis Echeverría, Amelia Kiddle and Maria Múñoz, eds. (University of Arizona Press, 2010)

“‘New Rules for the Unions’: Mexico’s Steel Workers Confront Privatization and the Neoliberal Challenge,” Labor: Working-Class History of the Americas (2007)

“Patriots and Proletarians: Industrial Workers and National Identity in Revolutionary Mexico,” in The Eagle and the Virgin: Mexico’s Cultural Revolution, l920-l940 Stephen Lewis and Mary Kay Vaughan, eds. (Duke University Press, 2006)

“From Collusion to Independence: The press, the ruling party, and democratization in Mexico,” in The Mission: Journalism, Ethics and the World, Joe Atkins, ed. (Iowa State University Press, 2002)

“Assessing Everyday Life in Post-Soviet Cuba,” Latin American Research Review (2001)

“The Birth and Consequences of Industrial Paternalism in Monterrey, Mexico, 1918-1940,” International Labor and Working-Class History (l998)

“‘Topics Not Suitable for Propaganda’: Working-Class Resistance Under Peronism,” in Workers’ Control in Latin America, Jonathan Brown, ed. (University of North Carolina Press, 1997)

Service

Associate Editor for Latin America/Caribbean, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas