CAS News  Back to CAS News

History professor wins book award
[05.21.2013]

TAMPA, Fla. -- Frances Ramos, assistant professor in the Department of History, has won the Michael C. Meyer Award for her recent book “Identity, Ritual, and Power in Colonial Puebla.”

Published by the University of Arizona Press, the monograph is a study on Puebla, colonial Mexico’s “second city.” Her research displays how politics and political culture were forged, tested and demonstrated through public ceremonies. This was done by community councilmen in order to join local and imperial rule. Within the pages of this book are council minutes, judicial cases, official correspondences and printed sermons that illustrate how public rituals encouraged the political culture in the 18th-century Puebla.

The Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies awarded the Michael C. Meyer Award to Ramos for best book on Mexican History during the past five years. The RMCLAS is the oldest Latin American academic organization in the world with a strong Mexican presence. The council was created in 1953 at the University of New Mexico.

The council’s judging committee called “Identity, Ritual, and Power in Colonial Puebla,” "A wonderfully written analysis of the cabildo in 18th-century Puebla, New Spain's second city, that places the nuanced analysis of ritual within the contexts of political, economic and social power. Ramos brings the actors in her work to life, presenting a dramatic story with which current readers can empathize, soundly based in the historical sources."

Ramos was born and raised in Miami, Fla. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin in 2005. In 2007, she became a Latin American history assistant professor at the USF.

-USF-

Filed under:Arts and Sciences History    
Credits
Author: Marissa Kosiec
Contact: