This year's HSS Division Speaker is hosted by the History Department! There will be light snacks at this event as well! 

About the Lecture: When American troops marched into Mexico City in September 1847 they met fierce resistance from the city’s population, especially the lower classes. This talk will examine this popular resistance to show how and why poor urban people expressed a vision of what the nation was and why it should be defended, even against extreme odds. It will also consider why both the Americans and the city’s wealthy interpreted the resistance not as an expression of national identity but instead as evidence of the criminal nature of the poor.

About the Guest Speaker: Peter Guardino is Provost Professor and Bernardo Mendel Chair of Latin American History at Indiana University. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1993. He has published more than twenty articles and the books Peasants, Politics and the Formation of Mexico's National State: Guerrero, 1800-1857 (Stanford University Press 1996) The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750-1850 (Duke University Press 2005) and The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War (Harvard University Press 2017). The latter won the Conference on Latin American History’s Bolton-Johnson Award for the best book on Latin American History, the Society for Military History’s Distinguished Book Award for the best book on non-United States Military History, and the Western History Association’s Robert
Utley Award for the best book on frontier military history. All three books have been translated and published in Mexico.