Session Abstract

Our panel proposes the intertwined concepts of citizenship and the public sphere as dynamic areas of inquiry with the potential to re-frame the purpose and techniques of political history in the Americas.  This "New Political History" recognizes an opportunity for  fresh theoretical and empirical perspectives that address the long-term, shifting, and interconnected trajectories of state formation, social activism  and narratives of belonging – or, in other words, the processes of the making and remaking political communities and political subjects.  Panelists explore a range of methods that engage political practices, languages, and representations; look for these forms of political practice in unexpected sites; and find evidence of them in often-overlooked sources.  We hope that, in so doing, our works widen our lens for understanding relations between a multiplicity of social actors and the state.

If we enthusiastically propose critical re-appraisals of public sphere and citizenship as the basis for an innovative history of 19th and 20th century Latin American Politics, we are also aware that of the simultaneous congruence and tension between these two related concepts.  We argue that our willingness to wrestling with this productive tension is precisely what allows us to reckon with the construction of collective identities or communities and the ties that bind them (their webs of networks and sociability) in a variety of periods and places.  Sensitive to the processes of building "community" and "network," panelists highlight our shared thematic and methodological concerns as a way to bridge traditional chronological, national and linguistic divides.  Spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, panelists will consider the intersections between the workings of politics citizenship and print media, informal urban networks, and emancipation movements in order to explore how these themes resonate throughout the political histories of the postcolonial era, writ large.