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Professor PATIENCE SCHELLChair in Hispanic Studies
| Telephone: | +44 (0)1224 272631 |
| E-mail: | p.schell@abdn.ac.uk |
| Address: | Hispanic Studies School of Language and Literature Taylor Building University of Aberdeen AB24 3UB |
I studied history at the University of California, Berkeley before completing my DPhil in history at St Antony’s College, Oxford University. I then worked at Birkbeck College, University of London and the University of Manchester before starting at the University of Aberdeen in the autumn of 2012.
My research has focused on two Latin American countries in two different centuries: nineteenth-century Chile and twentieth-century Mexico.
In my research on Mexico, I examined how the changes brought about by the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) were experienced at the grassroots level. Using Church and State educational programmes in Mexico City as my initial focus, I argued that students, both children and working adults, and teachers used the wide-ranging opportunities that the post-revolutionary era afforded them for their own ends – ends that ranged from skills training for upward mobility to enrolling in night school in order to find romance – amid the increasing tension between Church and State, both providers of free education. This research produced a single-authored monograph (Arizona, 2003) and two co-edited volumes, The Women’s Revolution in Mexico (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) and New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico (Duke, 2012).
My Chilean research focuses on the history of science, museums and friendship in the nineteenth-century. In The Sociable Sciences: Darwin and His Contemporaries in Chile (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) I argue that friendships has played a crucial role in the practice of the natural sciences; the transnational networks that this natural science community forged in and around Chile provided the mechanism through which a highly collaborative and sociable work dynamic emerged, in a period before naturalists had significant governmental or institutional support.
My current research builds on The Sociable Sciences to address the means through which natural history knowledge was created, adapted and transmitted in nineteenth-century Chile thanks to collaboration between career-minded naturalists, for whom Chile’s ‘unexplored’ status proved irresistible, and non-naturalist supporters, for whom fostering the natural sciences aided national progress.
(Level 2)
Latin America: Texts and Contexts
(Honours courses)
Revolutionary Creativity and American Inspiration
Ploughing the Sea: Spain and Spain America, 1750-1990
Women Making History: Mexico and Chile in the Twentieth Century
The Sociable Sciences: Darwin and His Contemporaries in Chile (forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Church and State Education in Revolutionary Mexico City. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003.
New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico. Volume co-edited with John Gledhill. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012.
The Women’s Revolution in Mexico, 1910-1953. Volume co-edited with Stephanie Mitchell. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.
‘Gender, Resistance and Mexico’s Church-State Conflict’. In New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico, John Gledhill and Patience A. Schell (eds.). Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012.
‘Eugenics Policy and Practice in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico’. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds.). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. (Volume Awarded the 2011 Cantemir Prize. Paperback edition, 2012)
‘Beauty and Bounty in Che’s Chile’. In Che’s Travels: The Making of a Revolutionary in 1950s Latin America, Paulo Drinot (ed.). Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010.
‘Museos, exposiciones y la muestra de lo chileno en el siglo XIX’. In Nación y nacionalismo en Chile. Siglo XIX, Gabriel Cid Rodríguez and Alejandro San Francisco (eds.). Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios Bicentenario, 2009. 
‘Social Catholicism, Modern Consumption and the Culture Wars in Postrevolutionary Mexico City’, History Compass 5 (July 2007).
‘Gender and Anxiety at the Gabriela Mistral Vocational School, in Revolutionary Mexico City’. In Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan and Gabriela Cano (eds.). Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. (Volume translated as Género, poder y política en el México posrevolucionario. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010).
‘Las mujeres del catolicismo social, 1912-1926’. In Catolicismo social en México, tomo II, Las instituciones del catolicismo social, Manuel Ceballos Ramírez and Alejandro Garza Rangel (eds.). Monterrey, México: La Academia de Investigación Humanística, 2005.
‘Entre la libertad y el control: Política educativa mexicana y reacciones desde el Porfiriato hasta la Revolución’. In Instituciones y formas de control social en América Latina, 1880-1940. Una revisión, Ernesto Bohoslavsky and María Silvia Di Liscia (eds.). Buenos Aires: Edulpam-Editorial de la UNGS, 2005.
‘Nationalizing Children through Schools and Hygiene: Porfirian and Revolutionary Mexico City’, The Americas 60:4 (April 2004): 559-87.
Bringing my research to a wider public is one of the great pleasures of my work. Previous outreach events include -
Guest on ‘Woman’s Hour’, Radio 4, ‘Women in the Mexican Revolution’, 11 February 2011
Guest on ‘In Our Time’, Radio 4 and BBC World Service, ‘The Mexican Revolution of 1910’, 20 January 2011
‘The Mexican Revolution, 1910-2010: Historical and Cultural Perspectives’ Symposium, the British Academy, London. Lecture, ‘The Revolution and Women’, 17 November 2010
Guest on BBC Radio Manchester ‘Breakfast’ programme, interviewed by Allan Beswick about Charles Darwin in Chile, 10 August 2010; also available through BBC America.
‘In Darwin’s Footsteps’ Exhibition, Manchester Museum. Exhibition talk, 20 January 2010
‘Revolution on Paper’ Exhibition, British Museum, London. Lunchtime lecture, ‘Soldaderas, Modern Girls and Catholic Ladies: Mexican Women 1900–1950’, 20 November 2009
‘William Wilson: Life in a Botanical Community’ and ‘A Brief Biography of Philip Pearsall Carpenter: Shell Expert, Swimming Instructor and Social Reformer’. Papers researched and written for the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery exhibition, ‘Natural Curiosity’ (2 December 2006–11 May 2007), held in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, London.
I am happy to supervise postgraduate research on topics concerned with the cultural and social history of Spanish America, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Of particular interest to me are topics related to themes of gender, including women’s history and masculinity, history of science, exploration and museums, history of education (widely understood) and the history of friendship and other ties that bind.
Current PhD student:
Alejandra Isaza (enrolled at the University of Manchester, co-supervised with Professor Peter Wade) ‘The Musical Construction of the Nation: Music, Politics and State in Colombia, 1848-1910’
Previous PhD students:
Sandra Aguilar Rodríguez (Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA, USA): ‘Cooking Modernity in the Mexican Countryside: Women's Daily Life in Guanajuato in the 1950s’
Sarah Bowskill (Queen’s University, Belfast): ‘The formation of the Mexican Literary Canon in the Context of Twentieth Century Discourses of Nation Building’
James Scorer (University of Manchester): Citizenship and Community in Contemporary Argentine Urban Culture
Hispanic Studies, School of Language & Literature
Taylor Building · University of Aberdeen · Aberdeen · AB24 3UB · Scotland
Telephone: +44 (0)1224-272549 · Fax: +44 (0)1224-272624
Follow us on Twitter @abdnhispanists
Page last modified: Thursday, 24-Jan-2013 12:21:41 GMT
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