On June 18th 1959, dressed in full army fatigues and accompanied by several comrades exhibiting an equally imposing revolutionary appearance, Che Guevara landed in Gaza.
Che in Gaza: Searching for the Story Behind the Image
Reforming Prisons in Early Twentieth-century Texas
Elizabeth L. Ring was a prominent public servant and social reformer in early twentieth-century Texas. During her marriage to Henry Franklin Ring, an attorney, Elizabeth became involved in campaigning for state funding for libraries, advocating for more educational and political opportunities for women, and spearheading efforts to enact laws that protected the rights of working women and children (such as minimum wage legislation).
The Disappearing Mestizo, by Joanne Rappaport (2014)
From Mexico to Chile, Latin American intellectuals, artists, and activists proudly proclaim that they, their nations, and their cultures were born from a mix of Spanish and Indian heritage. The adjective for this mix is “mestizo;” individuals of Spanish-Indian descent are “mestizos.”
Notes From the Field: Trinity College, Cambridge and the Accidents of Research
I was reminded of the accidents of research recently as I was dining at High Table in Trinity College, University of Cambridge.
Notes from the Field: The Pope in Manila
This week my attempts to carry out archival research in Manila have been interrupted by Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines.
Sculpture and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica
I had long been aware of the enigmatic sculptures known colloquially as “potbellies”or, in Spanish, barrigones, with their unusual features, often enormous bellies and recurring facial features. It was hard for me to imagine that the massive potbellies had much to tell me about the rise of the earliest state-level societies in Mesoamerica...
Episode 60: Texas and the American Revolution
Ben Wright of UT’s Briscoe Center for American History has been working with the Bexar archives to document how Spain’s–and Texas’s–efforts to divert sources of food and funding to American colonial troops.
Catholic Borderlands
This vision of the borderlands recognizes that it is more than a single geographic space along the U.S.-Mexico border. Rather, the borderlands encompasses a wider swath of American interaction with Spanish peoples in asserting influence and control. American Catholics simultaneously benefited from and sought to undermine various aspects of American expansion.
Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit, by Kristen Block (2012)
In Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean, Kristen Block explores the role of religious doctrines as rational, strategic discourses in the seventeenth-century Caribbean. Certainly, Christianity shaped inter-imperial diplomacy, economic projects, and “national” identities.
Francisco de Miranda: A Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution 1750-1816, by Karen Racine (2002)
At 58 Grafton Way, a blue plaque celebrates the “precursor of Latin American Independence” Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816), resident at this address between 1802 and 1810, and the subject of Karin Racine’s book, Francisco de Miranda, a Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution.