Education
2021 University of Pennsylania, Ph.D., History
2016 University of Pennsylvania, M.A., History
2014 Columbia University, B.A., Latin American and Caribbean Studies
My book project, Recording Indigenous Resistance: Memory, Literacy, and Narrative Power in 20th-Century Ecuador, (under contract with University of New Mexico Press) brings memory studies, oral history, and intellectual history approaches to the study of Indigenous mobilization in twentieth-century Ecuador, arguably the most organized Indigenous movement in the history of the Americas. I argue that Indigenous labor activists on the haciendas of Cayambe, Ecuador recorded narratives that articulated their historicity and political expertise. Building on organizational efforts to form unions in the 1920s, Indigenous labor leaders--particularly women--created socialist schools in the 1940s to teach their communities to read and write in Spanish to be able to read, understand, and defend their political and social rights. In the 1960s they recorded oral histories wherein they challenged the notion that they were incapable of articulating an autonomous political agenda. Indigenous labor organizers in Ecuador asserted the power of Indigenous expertise on issues of class and cultural resistance, nationalism, modernity, and even global Cold War politics. Using these narratives, sympathetic scholar-activists printed books and visual images, and championed local leaders as icons for the next generation. This work laid claim to new forms of political participation in the 1970s, as alliances with the traditional Left unraveled and government functionaries limited activists’ power. By placing oral history and subject formation at the center of my work, I contribute to scholarship that recognizes the essential role that narrative forms play in enabling grassroots political consciousness.
Publications
"“God Save Me From a Civilized Indian:” Labor Union Schools and Contending Visions for Indigenous Education in Ecuador, 1936-1963," Hispanic American Historical Review (August 2024); 465-495.
Courses Taught
HIST 317: Land and the Left in the Americas
HIST 309: Knowledge, Power, and the Production of History in Latin America
HIST 299: Historical Methods Lab: Archive Theory and Practice
HIST 291: Indigenous Women: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in Latin America
HIST 271: History of the Andes
HIST 125: Introduction to Latin American and Latinx History