The Eagle and the Virgin

National Memory and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940 (Durham, 2006)

My co-edited volume with Mary Kay Vaughan, The Eagle and the Virgin: National Memory and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940 (Durham, 2006) was inspired by my frustration over teaching the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920 or 1910-1940, depending on who's counting). How was it possible that so few classroom texts were available to teach the most exciting, most important period in Mexican history? I think the volume does a good job at highlighting the state's top-down state- and nation-building designs (in music, education, film, radio, architecture and the arts) as well as the responses of peasants, women, indigenous peoples, conservative Catholics, and industrial workers, among others.