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University of Southern California
University of Southern California
History

Faculty

Marjorie Becker

Associate Professor of History

Contact Information
E-mail: mbecker@usc.edu
Phone: (213)740-1674
Office: SOS 269

 

Biographical Sketch

Marjorie Becker holds a doctorate and two of her three masters in Latin American History from Yale University. Her Yale dissertation, long taught in graduate courses, reveals the material cultural roots of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico's most important twentieth century president's approach to government. Long viewed as highly popular, her multi-archival and oral historical work revealed the complex authoritarianism characteristic of his rule. Her monograph, Setting the Virgin on Fire, focuses on the grass roots resistance movement to the post-revolutionary government's efforts to transform its citizens. That movement, in fact, altered modern Mexican political culture. Her other m.a. is in History with a focus on the Deep South, African American History, the multiple relationships between Mexican poet Octavio Paz and the Mexican revolution; this m.a. is from Duke University. She served in the Peace Corps in rural Paraguay, teaching nutrition, textile arts, health and first aid to Paraguayan women and girls, and she did so in the unwritten indigenous Guarani language. She was invited to return to Paraguay to direct the program in which she served. She also worked as a former print journalist writing about race relations, health, the emerging nature of Southern life and culture. She has written and published about the Mexican revolution, its attendant counter-revolution, aboutthe artist Frida Kahlo, about Mexico's distinctly gendered time which she has named "ghost time." She is also a creative writer as historian and poet, and has written widely and deeply about longing, redemption, heroism, and most especially, dance. Her most recent poetry collection, "Glass Piano, Piano Glass," will be published in 2010; her previous collection, Body Bach, came out in 2005.

Education

  • M.A. , Duke University, 1/1980
  • M.A. , Yale University, 1/1982
  • M. Phil. , Yale University, 1/1983
  • Ph.D. , Yale University, 1/1988

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests
An expert in Latin American history, Professor Becker researches the Mexican Revolution and counter-revolution, issues involving gender, ethnicity and class, and African American slavery in the U.S. South.
Research Specialties
Mexican revolution and counter-revolution, race in the Americas, gender, time including "ghost time," Frida Kahlo, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, innovative historical writing, magical realism, the politicization of Mexican dance, the dances of Mexican politics.

Other Research

  • For a number of years I conducted an oral history project, interviewing a number of Macon, Georgia African Americans, German Jews and Russian Jews. I was able to draw on some of this research for my Rethinking History Article, "Talking Back to Frida: Houses of Emotional Mestizaje", Fall 2008   
  • During my sabbatical leave, I engaged in complex, multi-lingual and multi-disciplinary research, utilizing documents I was fortunate enough to discover, including in Mexican archives I was fortunate enough to create the environment and the contacts necessary to oppen. These documents, and my original approach to Mary the Jew, particular illiterate Mexican women's complex and vibrant approaches to her, form part of the reseach and writing I have developed. Another crucial element of this research has enabled me to imaginatively ponder potential connections between Mexican women's literacy and longing during the post-revolutionary period., Spring 2008   

Publications

Book
  • Becker, M. R. (1995). Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan Peasants and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  • Becker, M. R. (1995). Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan Peasants and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Book Chapter
  • Becker, M. (2004). Afterword to When I was a child, I danced as a child, but now that I am old, I think about salvation: Concepcion Gonzalez and a past that would not stay put. (Vol. Experiments in Rethinking History). New York, New York: Routledge.
  • Becker, M. (1996). Black and White and Color: Cardenismo and the Search for a Campesino Ideology in Daniel H. Levine, ed., Constructing Culture and Power in Latin America. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
  • Becker, M. (1994). Torching La Purisima, Dancing at the Altar: The Construction of Revolutionary Hegemony in Michoacan, 1934--1940. (Vol. Everyday Forms of State Formation). Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Book Review
  • Becker, M. R. Imagining la Chica Moderna.
  • Becker, M. R. (2008). Book review of Susan Kellogg, Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America's Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present. The American Historical Review.
Journal Article
  • Becker, M. (2008). As Though They Meant Her No Harm, María Enríquez Remade the Friends Who Abandoned Her-Their Intentions, Their Possibilities, Their Worlds--Inviting Them (Perhaps, It Is True,) To Dance. Rethinking History.
  • Becker, M. (1997). When I was a child, I danced as a child, but now that I am old, I think about salvation: Concepcion Gonzalez and a past that would not stay put. Rethinking History.
  • Becker, M. (1987). El cardenismo y la busqueda de una ideologia campesina. Relaciones: Estudios de Historia y Sociedad. (29)
  • Becker, M. (1987). Black and White and Color: Cardenismo and the Search for a Campesino Ideology,". Comparative Studies in Society and History/Cambridge University Press. Vol. 29 (3)
Poetry Collection

Multimedia Scholarship and Creative Works

  • Journal Article, "A Meta-Reflection on 'Talking Back to Frida,'" History and Theory, 2002-2003   
  • Journal article, "Talking Back to Frida: Houses of Emotional Mestizaje," History and Theory, December 2002, one of a series of complex, multi-formal articles focusing on various deeply embroidered, contextualized houses of abuse, longing, sensuality and generosity, 2002-2003   
  • encyclopedia article, "Lazaro Cardenas," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures.", 2001-2002   
  • Journal article, "When I Was a Child, I Danced as a Child, but Now that I am Old, I Think about Salvation: Concepcion Gonzalez and a Past that Would Not Stay Put," Rethinking History. Nominated for Conference of Latin American History article prize. This article is one of my collection of innovative dance articles., 1997-1998   
  • article in editted volume with new afterword, Afterword and selected republication of "When I Was a Child, I Danced as a Child, but Now that I Am Old, I Think about Salvation: Concepcion Gonzalez and a Past that Would Not Stay Put," (selected commmissioned article from Rethinking History," in Experiments in Rethinking History, 2004-2005   
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