Katz Center for Mexican Studies

 

Land, Politics, and Revolution: A Conference in Honor of Friedrich Katz

September 28 - September 29, 2007

Historian Friedrich Katz will reach his 80th birthday this year, and the University of Chicago is organizing a major international conference in his honor (September 28-29, 2007). The conference assembled the leading historians of nineteenth and twentieth-century Mexico from Mexico itself as well as from the United States and Europe. It focused on the comparative and transnational history of Mexico during the formative years of the modern nation, roughly from 1880 to 1940. The aim of the conference was to produce a book of exceptional interest not only to historians of Mexico, but also to social scientists, students, and the reading public. The essays in the volume addressed a broad range of issues, including the social roots of Mexican nationalism and internationalism, the transformation of the Mexico–U.S. boundary into a distinctive borderland, and the history of rural immigration from Mexico to the United States.

The occasion for this event was a celebration of the life and work of Friedrich Katz. The conference brought together Katz’s many friends, colleagues, and students from Chicago, the United States, Mexico, and Europe. A Chicago professor since 1971, Katz is probably the most eminent historian of modern Mexico working in the United States today. His books are widely recognized as brilliant works of scholarship. A generous and wise teacher and mentor, many of his students have become well known academics in the United States, Mexico, and the rest of Latin America. Friedrich Katz is broadly respected and admired in Mexico, a country he first learned to love when he lived there as a young boy. In 1988, he received the Orden del Águila Azteca, the highest honor Mexico can bestow on a foreign national. In 2004, Mexican president Vicente Fox inaugurated the Katz Center for Mexican Studies at the University of Chicago, which is already widely recognized as a vibrant center of international intellectual discussion on Mexican matters.

"Land, Politics, and Revolution" was organized by Emilio Kourí, Dept. of History at University of Chicago.

Major funding for the conference was generously provided by the Tinker Visiting Professor Endowment at the University of Chicago Center for Latin American Studies. Additional financial support is provided by the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, the Department of History, and the Norman Wait Harris Fund of the Center for International Studies.

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International Conference “Comunidad e Historia en México”

May 28, 2005

Una discusión sobre el lugar de las comunidades campesinas en la historia de México: la historia de las comunidades, las ideas acerca de la comunidad y la historia de las ideas acerca de la comunidad en la historiografía, en el discurso político y en el orden jurídico.

Participantes:

Antonio Azuela, UNAM

Fernando Escalante, Tinker Visiting Professor of History, Univ. Of Chicago

Friedrich Katz, University of Chicago

Emilio Kourí, University of Chicago

Claudio Lomnitz, New School University

Mauricio Tenorio, University of Texas, Austin

Juan Pedro Viqueira , El Colegio de México

Read an article of this event:
< http://clas.uchicago.edu/publications/latamchi/vol24no4.pdf>

 

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Public Lecture Series “NAFTA and Mexico: Ten Years Later”

Armando Bartra , scholar, peasant activist, and founder and director of Mexico’s Instituto Maya.   He is also editorial board member of such journals and periodicals as Cuadernos Agrarios, Chiapas and frequent contributor to Luna Córnea, Memoria and La Jornada.   He is also author and co-author of numerous works including Guerrero Bronco: Campesinos, Cuidadanos y Guerrilleros en la Costa Grande (1996) and Crónicas del sur : utopías campesinas en Guerrero (2000).

February 23, 2005
Stuart Hall

Read an article on this event:
< http://clas.uchicago.edu/publications/latamchi/vol24no3.pdf>

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John Coatsworth
John H. Coatsworth is Professor of History and Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard University. The author of three books and numerous scholarly articles on Latin American economic and international history, he was elected President of the American Historical Association for 1995. He also serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the Center for International Affairs, and Senior Fellow of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.

February 4, 2005
Social Science Lecture Rm. 122

Read an article on this event:
< http://clas.uchicago.edu/publications/latamchi/vol24no3.pdf>

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Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Tinker Visiting Professor at The University of Chicago (2003) and prominent Mexican politician.   He has ran for the Mexican presidency on several occasions and is one of the founders of Mexico’s Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).

January 13, 2005
International House

Listen to this event:
< http://clas.uchicago.edu/events/lectures/nafta.shtml>

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Carlos Salinas de Gortari , Harvard- educated political economist and former President of Mexico.   Salinas was instrumental in the passage of NAFTA ( North American Free Trade Agreement).

December 3, 2004
Mandel Hall

Listen to this event:
  < http://clas.uchicago.edu/events/lectures/nafta.shtml>

Read an article on this event:
< http://clas.uchicago.edu/publications/latamchi/vol24no2.pdf