Benjamin Thomas Smith

Department of History

Michigan State University

East Lansing

MI 48824

D.O.B: 07/01/1977

Employment

Date
/ Establishment / Position
September 2010- / History Department, Michigan State University / Associate Professor in Modern Mexican History
September 2006-September 2010 / History Department, Michigan State University / Assistant Professor in Modern Mexican History
September 2005-September 2006 / History Department, Michigan State University / Instructor in Modern Mexican History
January 2005-August 2005 / Centre for History and Economics, Kings College, Cambridge / Part-time Research Fellow/Project Coordinator of International Historical Research Programme, “Coexistence, Religion, and the Political Imagination”

Education

Date Establishment Position

2002-2006 / Jesus College
University of Cambridge / Ph.D. in History
“Cardenismo, caciques, and Catholicism: The Political Process of State Formation in Oaxaca, Mexico, 1928-1947”
2001-2002 / Jesus College
University of Cambridge / M.Phil in History
Distinction
“The Contestation and Construction of Emiliano Zapata in Post-Revolutionary Mexico”
1996-1999 / Jesus College
University of Cambridge / B.A. Honours in History
Part I – 1st
Part II – 1st

Publications

Books

Benjamin T. Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements: The Politics of State Formation in Post-revolutionary Oaxaca, 1920-1952, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009)

Articles

Benjamin T. Smith, “El Señor del Perdon y los matacristos de Oaxaca: La Revolución desde el punto de vista de los católicos”, Desacatos, 28, (2010), pp. 61-76.

Benjamin T. Smith and Keith Aaron Van Oosterhout, “The Limits of Catholic Science and the Mexican Revolution”, Endeavour, 34.2 (2010), pp. 55-60.

Benjamin T. Smith, “Anticlericalism, Politics, and Freemasonry in Mexico, 1920–1940” The Americas, 65.4 (2009), pp. 559-588.

Benjamin T. Smith, “Inventing Tradition at Gunpoint: Caciquismo and Culture in the Región Mixe, Oaxaca, 1930-1959”, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 27.2 (2008), pp. 215-234

Benjamin T. Smith, “”The Party of the Priest”: Local Religion in Huajuapam de León, 1920-1952” in Matthew Butler (ed.), Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico: God’s Revolution? (London: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 261-278.

Benjamin T. Smith, “Defending “Our Beautiful Freedom”: State Formation and Local Autonomy in Oaxaca, 1930-1940”, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 37.1 (2007), pp. 125-53

Benjamin T. Smith, “The Politics of Anticlericalism and Resistance: The Diocese of Huajuapam 1900-1940”, Journal of Latin American Studies, 37.3 (2005), pp. 469-505

Benjamin T. Smith, “New lines of inquiry into the post-revolutionary state in Oaxaca (1934-1947)” in Carlos Sanchez Silva (ed.), Historia, sociedad y literatura de Oaxaca. Nuevos enfoques, (Mexico, IIHUABJO-IEEPO, 2004), pp. 67-98.

Benjamin T. Smith, “El suicidio de un diputado: La inestablidad del régimen pos-revolucionario”, Agenda Política, Periodismo de Investigación y Análisis, 1.2 (2004), pp. 3-9.

In process

The following books and articles are finished, in press, and will be released in 2012/2013.

Benjamin T. Smith, Provincial Conservatism in Mexico: Religion, Society, and Politics in the Mixteca Baja, 1750-1962 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press)

Benjamin T. Smith and Paul Gillingham (eds.), La Dictablanda: Soft Authoritarianism in Mexico, 1940-1968 (Durham: Duke University Press)

Benjamin T. Smith and Paul Gillingham, “La Dictablanda: Towards a new understanding of Mexican authoritarianism, 1940-1968” in Benjamin Smith and Paul Gillingham (eds.), La Dictablanda: Soft Authoritarianism in Mexico, 1940-1968 (Durham: Duke University Press)

Benjamin T. Smith “Making a state on the cheap: Taxation, social movements, and state formation in Mexico, 1940-1968”, in Benjamin Smith and Paul Gillingham (eds.), La Dictablanda: Soft Authoritarianism in Mexico, 1940-1968 (Durham: Duke University Press)

Benjamin T. Smith, “Una cartografia de Cardenismo” in Tanalís Padilla and Enrique Florescano (eds.), El campesino y su persistencia en la actualidad Mexicana(Mexico City: El Colegio de México)

Benjamin T. Smith, “Heliodoro Charis Castro and the soldiers of Juchitán: Indigenous Militarism, Local Rule and the Mexican State” in Ben Fallaw and Terry Rugeley (eds.), Forced Marches: Militaries, Violence, and State (De)formation in modern Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press)

Benjamin T. Smith, Michael Swanton, and “Trikis en movimiento”, Hilario Alonso, el heroe de los Triquis, (Mexico City: CONACULTA) (bilingual in Spanish and Triqui)

Benjamin T. Smith (translation Noemi Morales Sánchez), Conservadurismo Provincial en México: Religión, Sociedad, y la Política en la Mixteca Baja, 1750-1962 (Mexico City: CIESAS-Colegio de Michoacán)

Book reviews

Fourteen reviews of books in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Times Literary Supplement, Journal of Social History,Journal of World History; and Hispanic American Historical Review. Books include William Beezley and Jürgen Buchenau, (eds), State Governors in the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1952, Portraits in Conflict, Courage, and Corruption (Lanham, 2009); Amelia M Kiddle and Maria L. O. Muñoz, (eds.), Populism in Twentieth Century Mexico, The Presidencies of Lázaro Cárdenas and Luis Echeverria (Tucson, 2010); Gustavo Leyva, Brian Connaughton and Nestor Garcia Canclini (eds.) Independencia y revolución: pasado, presente y futuro. (Mexico City, 2010); Brian Connuaghton (ed.), Religión, política e Identidad en la independencia de México (Mexico City, 2010); Nicolás Cárdenas García and Enrique Guerra Manzo (eds.), Integrados y marginados en el Méexico posrevolucionario: Los Juegos de poder local y sus nexos con La política nacional (Mexico City, 2009); Tanalis Padilla, Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax-Priísta, 1940-1962 (Duke University Press, 2008); John J. Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute: The Expropriation of American-Owned Rural Land in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Duke University Press, 2008); Patrick J. McNamara, Sons of the Sierra: Juárez, Díaz, and the People of Ixtlán, Oaxaca, 1855- 1920, (Chapel Hill, 2007); José Roberto Juárez, Reclaiming Church Wealth: The Recovery of Church Property After Expropriation in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, 1860-1911, (Albuquerque, 2004); Francie R. Chassen-López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca, The View from the South, Mexico, 1867-1911, (University Park, 2004); Christopher Boyer, Becoming Campesinos, Politics, Identity and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán, 1920-1935, (Stanford, 2003) and Matthew Butler, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1926-1929, (Oxford, 2004); J.A. Mangan, Lamartine P. Dacosta, Sport in Latin American Society, Past and Present, (London, 2002); Lynn Stephen, Zapata lives!: Histories and cultural politics in southern Mexico, (Berkeley, 2002)

Papers

Date Establishment Title

April 2010 / CIESAS, Guadalajara Conference on “Repensando la Revolución Mexicana” / Sociedades Agricolas y agrarismo en la Mixteca Baja, 1821-1900
October 2010 / Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Annual Meeting, Toronto / “Science and the Catholic Church in Latin America”
November 2009 / Colby College Latin American speakers series / “Dilemmas of Dissent: The APPO and Mexico’s new left”
March 2009 / La Dictablanda: Soft Authoritarianism in Mexico, 1940-1968, Michigan State University conference / “A state on the cheap: Taxation, popular movements, and state formation in modern Mexico”
September 2007 / Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Annual Meeting, Montreal / ““The Authentic Congress of the State”: Market Women and Popular Movements in Post-war Mexico”
“Socialist Education, State-Building and the Masonic Lodges of Mexico”
March 2006 / Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Annual Meeting, Puerto Rico / “The Life and Opinions of José Cantú Corro: Towards an Indigenous Popular Conservatism”
January 2006 / Latin American Graduate Seminar, University of Chicago / “A Comparison of Mixtec and Zapotec responses to Mexican Anticlericalism”
January 2006 / American Historical Association (AHA), Philadelphia / “Anticlericalism and the Cargo System in Oaxaca, 1930-1940”
October 2005 / Queens University, Belfast / “The Indigenous PAN in Oaxaca”
May 2005
April 2005 / Centre of Latin American Studies, Cambridge University
Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) Conference, Derby / “For a Drop of Water and a Ray of Light: Modernisation and Urban Protest in mid-twentieth century Mexico”
“Indigenismo and Caciquismo: Luis Rodriguez and the Mixes of Oaxaca, 1930-1959”
February 2005 / Postgraduates in Latin American Studies (PILAS), Cambridge / “Ethnicity, Religion and Politics: A comparative study of Cardenismo among the Zapotecs and Mixtecs of Oaxaca”
October 2004 / Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Annual Meeting, Las Vegas / “Religion and Politics in Huajuapam, 1900-1950”
June 2004 / Centre of Latin American Studies, Cambridge University / “The creation of the diocese of Huajuapam 1900-1940”
September 2003 / Universidad Teconológico de la Mixteca, Huajuapam, Mexico / “Anticlericalismo y resistancia en Huajuapam 1930-1940”
August 2003 / Universidad Teconológico de la Mixteca, Huajuapam, Mexico / La politica en Oaxaca, 1936-1947
August 2003 / Oaxaca Gradute Institute, Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico / “A Political History of Oaxaca, 1934-1946”
May 2003 / Faculty of Humanities, Universidad Autónoma Benito Juarez de Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico / “El régimen pos-revolucionario en Oaxaca durante las presidencias de Lázaro Cárdenas y Manuel Ávila Camacho”
March 2003 / Faculty of History, Cambridge University / “Eavesdropping on the Apostle of Agrarismo: Viva Zapata!”

Prizes and Grants

University of Notre Dame, Kellogg Fellowship (2010) (turned down)

Michigan State University, Humanities and Arts Research Program [HARP] Fellowship (2010)

Michigan State University, Sesquentennial travel fund, (2006)

University of Cambridge, Lightfoot Trust (For study of ecclesiastical history, 2003 and 2004)

University of Cambridge, Isaac Newton Trust (For outstanding result in M.Phil dissertation, 2003 -5)

Cambridge Domestic Research Scholarship (2001-5)

Arts and Humanities Research Board (2001)

Keeler Prize for Academic Achievement (For top academic results in Part II Tripos exams in Jesus College, 1999)

Schiff Prize for History (For top history student in Jesus College, 1999)

Jesus College Scholarship (For attaining a 1st in Tripos exams, 1998 and 1999)

Service

Department Advisory Committee, Michigan State University (2005-2006)

Graduate Admissions Committee, Michigan State University (2006-2007)

Hiring Committee, Michigan State University (2008-2009)

Advisor to MATRIX Latin American Oral History Project, Michigan State University (2005-7)

Founder of Latin American Studies Graduate Discussion Group, University of Cambridge, (2004-2005)

Membership of Professional Bodies

American Historical Association (2005-2011)

Latin American Studies Association (2005-2011)

Society of Latin American Studies (2004-2006)