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Newsletter 33: News from National Committees: Mexico

The number of historians working on women's history and gender history is growing not only in Mexico but also abroad. It is really exciting to see that more people from Mexico City and other regions are interested in these fields. They publish, participate in conferences, and organize distinct meetings to discuss the challenges to write a women's history. Different historians replied immediatly to my inquiry at H-MEXICO and helped significantly to bring news about Mexico. For instance, Lilly Wolfensberger notified me that on March 7, 2002, a group of female scholars founded the National Academy of Women affiliated to the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics to promote gender and women's studies. Likewise, several young historians in B.A., M.A., or Ph. D. Programs in Mexico, the U.S., and Britain informed me about their Research topics. The themes are very diverse and interesting. They are working distinct historical periods and regions from prehispanic and colonial times to the challenges faced by women in a globalization process. There has been a significant influence of pioner historians working on women's and gender history in Mexico (i. e., Mary Kay Vaughan, Silvia Arrom, Asunción Lavrin, Heather Fowler-Salamini, Carmen Ramos-Escandón, Pilar Gonzalbo, Ana Lau, and Gabriela Cano) in the younger generation historians. The hard work of these pioneer historians has allowed the recent boom in women's history and gender history in Mexico. Recently, young scholars interested in exchanging ideas and work with other young and senior historians organized the first conference at Yale University to have a comparative perspective and to establish a closer dialogue among these different generations of historians from Mexico and abroad. Jolie Olcott, then a student at Yale University and now assistant professor at Duke University, made possible this successful conference thanks to two grants that she obtained.

CONFERENCES AND CONGRESSES

2nd Reunion about Women: Recognizing their powers, March 8-9, 2002, Hermosillo, Sonora.

I National Congress of Research on Women, 2001, Puebla, México

I International Congress about the Feminization Process of Teaching held in San Luis Potosí at El Colegio de San Luis, February 21-23, 2001, coordinated by Oresta López.
(Organized by Teresa Fernández, Jolie H. Olcott, Gabriela Cano, Sasha Schell, Sarah Buck, Nikki Sanders, Deborah Cohen, Kristina Boylan, among others)

II Conference on Gender and Women in Mexican History.
CIESAS-Occidente is pleased to announce that it will host the second Conference on the History of Gender and Women in Mexico in Guadalajara, September 5-7, 2003. The conference has two principal objectives:

1. to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of new research responding to theoretical and empirical literature about gender as applied to Mexico
2. to promote and strengthen the ties among an international community of scholars dedicated to research about women's experiences and gender issues in Mexico
Using the analytical lens of gender, the conference will address lacunae in the current historiography of Mexico. Among the topics the conference will examine are the following themes:

* the complex relationships among class, gender, race, and ethnicity as categories of analysis
* how ideas about gender shape and are shaped by social and political movements as well as cultural, familial, and religious ideologies
* the constructions and meanings of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality across distinct periods and regions
* gender as a component of nationalism, institution-building, and state-formation
* the relationships among gender, violence, and civil/political/human rights
* transnational influences on gender, standards of beauty, health, and strength, the creation of a mass consumer culture, and popular conceptions of tradition and modernity
Through both conventional and innovative historical approaches - and through formal presentations, round table discussions, and informal meetings - this conference will advance the theoretical frameworks and empirical research that question current understandings of gender as a category of analysis and the standard historical periodizations and conceptualizations of women and men as historical actors.

RESEARCH THEMES

Avital Bloch, from the Universidad de Colima, analyzes different topics intellectual women, feminism in the U.S., and gender theory.

Kristina Boylan, independent scholar, is interested on lay Catholic women's activism in postrevolutionary Mexico; religion, gender, social activism, and popular engagement in Mexico and in comparative perspective.

Ana María Carrillo, from the Universidad Autónoma de México, focuses on the history of public health in relation to women.

Deborah Cohen, from the Mount Holyoke College, is interested in migration during the 1940s and 1950s, masculinity, identity, and modernity.

José René Córdova Rascón, from the Sociedad Sonorense de Historia, explores violence and masculinities during the Porfiriato in Sonora.

María Teresa Fernández Aceves, from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social-Occidente, is interested in women and gender in postrevolutionary Mexico, political history, labor history, and social movements. Now, she is working on the intersection of two national campaigns from a regional perspective: 1) to end the exploitation of women in different sweatshops, and 2) to obtain women's suffrage during the 1940s and 1950s

Consuelo Natalia Fiorentini Cañedo, from the Univesidad Autónoma de México, is doing her M.A.'s thesis on behavioral models, ideal representations, and social relations between men and women in Mexico City, 1521-1569.

Eileen Mary Ford, a Ph. D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, works on political and cultural motherhood in Mexico, 1940-1960.

Patricia Galeana, from the Universidad Autónoma de México, is interested in gender history in Mexico.

María García Acosta, from the Universidad de Guanajuato, works on female property-holders in Guanajuato during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Susan Gauss, from the University of Delaware, is interested in labor and gender in postrevolutionary Mexico.

Lilia Granillo Vázquez, from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco, works on women writers in the 19th century.

Mary Goldsmith, from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolotiana-Xochimilco,
is working on two themes: 1) on organizations of domestic workers in Latin America and 2) on kinship, sexuality and gender: domestic work and domestic service.

María del Carmen Gutiérrez Garduño, from the Instituto Superior de Ciencias de la Educación del Estado de México, studies the history of the education of women during the 19th and 20th centuries.

María del Pilar Gutiérrez Lorenzo, from the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey-Campus Guadalajara, is interested in the Catholic education for girls during the 19th century.

Ana Lau Jaiven, from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, studies women in the Mexican Revolution and Feminism in Mexico.

Oresta López, from El Colegio de San Luis, is interested in the history of education of women during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Rosalva Loreto López, from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, examines nuns during the colonial period.

Roberto Miranda, from the Universidad de Guadalajara, investigates two topics: 1) marriage in the Bishopric of Guadalajara during the 18th century, and 2) gender and culture during the Porfiriato.

Jolie H. Olcott, from Duke University, is interested in women and gender in postrevolutionary Mexico, political history, and comparative labor history.

Caterina Pizzigoni, a Ph. D. student at King's College London, is working on Nahua women during the colonial period.

Nidia Yzabel Pech Can, M.A.'s student from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, is working on Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer, 1883-1890.

Susie S. Porter, from the University of Utah, is interested in working women, the social construction of gender in discourse and material conditions in Mexico during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Carmen Ramos-Escandón, from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social-México, studies the civil codes, family and gender relations during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Leticia Reina, from Historical Studies of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, works on identity and gender relations among Zapotecs from the Itsmo de Tehuantepec during the 19th century.

Elva Rivera Gómez, from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, studies the topic of history and historiography of women in Mexico.

Landy Elizabeth Santana Rivas, from the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, is interested in identity and gender during the 19th century.

Ana María de los Dolores Saloma Gutiérrez, from ENAH-INAH, examines the role of female tobacco workers during the 19th century.

Nichole Sanders, form the University of California-Irvine, examines in her Ph. D. dissertation the relationship among gender, welfare, and the Mexican Miracle during 1937-1958.

Patience Alexandra Schell, from the University of Manchester, works on women and education in postrevolutionary Mexico, motherhood, and the social and political work of Elite Catholic women.

Valentina Torres Septién, from the Universidad Iberoamericana, researches on Mexican Women's Catholic culture during the 20th century.

Agustín Vaca, from El Colegio de Jalisco, works on Communism and collective imaginery in Jalisco, 1891-1991.

Lilly Wolfesberger Scherz, from the National Academy of Women, examines the economic, social, and childrearing roles of women.

(For a list of recent publications, see Supplement to this issue.)
-compiled by Maria Teresa Fernandez Aceves