Mexican Studies
The department of Romance Languages and Literatures gathers in its Spanish section a group of researchers whose collective work makes Mexico one of our areas of strength and expertise. The study of colonial Mexico is spearheaded by Stephanie Kirk, whose research approaches the culture of the New Spain from the intersection between gender and religious studies. Prof. Kirk’s work has contributed to the study of convent life and the life and work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and she is currently engaged in the study of Jesuit culture and in the work of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. In addition, Miguel Valerio represents in our department the study of one of the rising subfields in Mexican studies, concerned with the history and culture Afro-Mexican communities. His work engages on religious confraternities and public festivals in the Iberian Atlantic, with a focus in Mexico City. Intersecting archival work with the theoretical exploration of race, Prof. Valerio studies questions of identity, performance and power in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Ignacio Sánchez Prado is the department’s expert on 19th and 20th century Mexican culture. His work centers on cultural institutions and their connections to intellectual history and aesthetics. From this perspective, he has worked on the formation of literary fields and the film industry across time, thinking Mexican culture both in terms of the material practices that constitute and in its national and transnational networks. Prof. Sánchez Prado is currently working on the development of popular sovereignty and popular nationalism, and on the question of food cultural studies in Mexico. Mexico’s rich transatlantic history is the focus of Tabea Linhard, who has written about the cultural connections and parallels between the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. Prof. Linhard’s current research project tracks he itineraries of European exiled writers across the Mediterranean and the Pacific, including the study of many figures who worked and lived in Mexico.
Taken together, the work of these four scholars covers the culture of Mexico from the 16th to the 21st century, with a range of research questions that encompass issues of gender, race and class, intellectual histories and practices, social and cultural institutions and the complexities and contradictions in the country’s sociopolitical history.
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