Laura Méndez de Cuenca

Laura Méndez de Cuenca
Author: Mílada Bazant
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0816538352

Laura Méndez de Cuenca—poet, teacher, editor, writer, and feminist—dared to bypass the cultural traditions of her time. In the early 1870s, when conservative religious thought permeated all aspects of Mexican life, she was one of very few women to gain admission to an extraordinary constellation of male poets, playwrights, and novelists, who were also the publicists and statesmen of the time. She entered this world through her poetry, intellect, curiosity, assertiveness, but her personal life was fraught with tragedy: she had a child out of wedlock by poet Manuel Acuña, who killed himself shortly thereafter. She later married another poet, Agustín Fidencio Cuenca, and had seven other children. All but two of her children died, as did Agustín. As a penniless young widow facing social rejection, Laura became a teacher and an important force in Mexico’s burgeoning educational reform program. She moved abroad—first to San Francisco, then St. Louis, then Berlin. In these places where she was not known and women had begun to move confidently in the public sphere, she could walk freely, observe, mingle, make friends across many circles, learn, think, and express her opinions. She wrote primarily for a Mexican public and always returned to Mexico because it was her country’s future that she strove to create. Now, for the first time in English, Mílada Bazant shares with us the trajectory of a leading Mexican thinker who applied the power of the pen to human feeling, suffering, striving, and achievement.

Women in International and Universal Exhibitions, 1876–1937

Women in International and Universal Exhibitions, 1876–1937
Author: Rebecca Rogers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2017-08-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 135176733X

This book argues for the importance of bringing women and gender more directly into the dynamic field of exposition studies. Reclaiming women for the history of world fairs (1876-1937), it also seeks to introduce new voices into these studies, dialoguing across disciplinary and national historiographies. From the outset, women participated not only as spectators, but also as artists, writers, educators, artisans and workers, without figuring among the organizers of international exhibitions until the 20th century. Their presence became more pointedly acknowledged as feminist movements developed within the Western World and specific spaces dedicated to women’s achievements emerged. International exhibitions emerged as showcases of "modernity" and "progress," but also as windows onto the foreign, the different, the unexpected and the spectacular. As public rituals of celebration, they transposed national ceremonies and protests onto an international stage. For spectators, exhibitions brought the world home; for organizers, the entire world was a fair. Women were actors and writers of the fair narrative, although acknowledgment of their contribution was uneven and often ephemeral. Uncovering such silence highlights how gendered the triumphant history of modernity was, and reveals the ways women as a category engaged with modern life within that quintessential modern space—the world fair.

Historia mínima. La cultura mexicana en el siglo XX

Historia mínima. La cultura mexicana en el siglo XX
Author: Carlos Monsiváis
Publisher: El Colegio de Mexico AC
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2010-02-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 6074623805

En esta obra póstuma, Carlos Monsiváis, con su estilo y erudición únicos, recorre un siglo de la vida cultural de México, si bien, como él mismo confiesa, ésta es una tarea inacabable a la que además se suma la brevedad de la obra, que le obliga a cerrar su crónica en la década de 1980, dejando fuera los movimientos y creadores de los dos últimos decenios del siglo XX. Su recorrido parte de la época del modernismo y pasa por todas las manifestaciones culturales que se desarrollan a lo largo de las siguientes décadas, como la narrativa de la Revolución, el muralismo, la cultura en los años veinte, los Contemporáneos, la poesía de la generación del 50 hasta llegar al año de la ruptura que representa 1968 y las manifestaciones culturales que de él se desprenden.

Shaping the History of Education?

Shaping the History of Education?
Author: Jeroen Dekker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2018-02-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317238281

In 1961 the Centre for the Study of the History of Education at Ghent University, Belgium published the first issue of the multilingual journal Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education. This book celebrates its fiftieth volume. In fourteen contributions written by different generations of historians of education, it demonstrates that in an era where the history of education at university level is at risk, both the journal and the discipline are pulsing, and alive and kicking. Was the journal a trendsetter or a follower, and which position did it take with respect to the International Standing Conference for the History of Education? These are questions addressed in the first section of this book. In the second section, a number of articles show national and transnational developments of the history of education. In their diversity, they make clear how the national and the transnational together characterize the discipline. They show why journals in this domain should stimulate the development of broader concepts and theories in order to put national and regional cases in a broader scientific context and to make them attractive for international readership. In the last section authors turn their minds to the future of the history of education. They write about the shaping of new trends and about moving beyond borders, focusing on, among other things, the challenge of neurosciences and of digital humanities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Paedagogica Historica.

From Angel to Office Worker

From Angel to Office Worker
Author: Susie S. Porter
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2018-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496206517

In late nineteenth-century Mexico a woman’s presence in the home was a marker of middle-class identity. However, as economic conditions declined during the Mexican Revolution and jobs traditionally held by women disappeared, a growing number of women began to look for work outside the domestic sphere. As these “angels of the home” began to take office jobs, middle-class identity became more porous. To understand how office workers shaped middle-class identities in Mexico, From Angel to Office Worker examines the material conditions of women’s work and analyzes how women themselves reconfigured public debates over their employment. At the heart of the women’s movement was a labor movement led by secretaries and office workers whose demands included respect for seniority, equal pay for equal work, and resources to support working mothers, both married and unmarried. Office workers also developed a critique of gender inequality and sexual exploitation both within and outside the workplace. From Angel to Office Worker is a major contribution to modern Mexican history as historians begin to ask new questions about the relationships between labor, politics, and the cultural and public spheres.