Thomas McGann Award

Thomas McGann Book Prize in Modern Latin American History

Originally given to the outstanding presentation at the annual RMCLAS meeting, this prize is awarded to the outstanding book published by a member of the association in the previous calendar year (2022) on the subject of modern Latin American history. Due to global shipping challenges across the world this year RMCLAS will accept book nominations in either a physical or e-book submission.  If both are an option, our readers would appreciate access to both. To be eligible, candidates must be members for two out of three years including the present year.

Deadline: February 1, 2024

Please send a copy of the book to each member of the committee:

Jason Dormady, Chair
409 South Pine Street
Ellensburg, WA 98926

Carrie Ryan
319 Lantern Lane
De Pere, WI 54115

Donald Stevens
4916 Osage Ave.
Philadelphia, PA  19143


Previous Award Winners:

2022, Elizabeth B. Schwall, University of California, Berkeley for Dancing with the Revolution: Power, Politics, and Privilege in Cuba. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2021.

2021, Carolyne R. Larson, ed., Conquest of the Desert: Argentina’s Indigenous People and a Battle for History, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press

2020, Donald Stevens, Mexico in the Time of Cholera, University of New Mexico Press

2019, Susie S. Porter, From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female
Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950, University of Nebraska Press

Honorable Mention, Stephen E. Lewis, Rethinking Mexican Indigenismo: The INI’s
Coordinating Center in Highland Chiapas and the Fate of a Utopian Project, University of New Mexico Press

2018, John Lear
Picturing the Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Revolutionary Mexico, 1908–1940

2016 William E. French,
The Heart in the Glass Jar: Love Letters, Bodies, and the Law in Mexico

Honorable Mention: Renata Keller,
Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution

2015 Thomas C. Field,
From Development to Dictatorship: Bolivia and the Alliance for Progress in the Kennedy Era. (Cornell University Press, 2014)

Honorable Mention: Elaine Carey,
Women Drug Traffickers: Mules, Bosses, and Organized Crime. (UNM Press, 2014)

2014 Natalia Milanesio,
Workers Go Shopping in Argentina: The Rise of Popular Consumer Culture.  (UNM Press, 2013)

Honorable Mention:  Louise E. Walker,
Waking from the Dream: Mexico’s Middle Classes after 1968.  (Stanford University Press, 2013)

2013 Steven B. Bunker,
Creating Mexican Consumer Culture in the Age of Porfirio Díaz, (UNM Press, 2012)

2012 Jody Pavilack,
Mining for the Nation: The Politics of Chile’s Coal Communities from the Popular Front to the Cold War. (Penn State University Press, 2011)

2011 Alcira Dueñas,
Indians and Mestizos in the “Lettered City”: Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchy and Political Culture in Colonial Peru(University Press of Colorado, 2010)

2010 Matthew O’Hara,
A Flock Divided: Race, Religion, and Politics in Mexico, 1749-1857.  (Duke University Press, 2010)

2009 Asunción Lavrin,
Brides of Christ: Conventional Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2008)

Honorable Mention: Samuel Brunk,
The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata: Myth, Memory, and Mexico’s Twentieth Century. (University of Texas Press, 2008)

Honorable Mention: John Dwyer,
The Agrarian Dispute: The Expropriation of American-Owned Rural Land in Postrevolutionary Mexico(Duke University Press, 2008)

2008 Thomas C. Wright,
State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights.  (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007)

2007 Bianca Premo,
Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima. (UNC Press, 2006)

2006 Karen Vieira Powers,
Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Conquest.  (UNM Press, 2005)

2005 Francie R. Chassen-López,
From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca: The View from the South, Mexico 1876-1911
(Penn State University Press, 2004)

2004 Susan Deeds,
Defiance and Deference in Colonial Mexico: Indians under Spanish Rule in Nueva
Vizcaya (University of Texas Press, 2003

2003 Pamela Voekel,
Alone before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico. (Duke University
Press, 2002)

Honorable Mention: Kris Lane,
Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition. (UNM Press, 2002)

2002 Andrew Grant Wood,
Revolution in the Street: Women, Workers, and Urban Protest in Veracruz, 1870-1927.
(Scholarly Resources, 2001)

2001 Peter V.N.Henderson,
The Absence of Don Porfirio: Francisco Leon de la Barra and the Mexican Revolution.
(Scholarly Resources, 2000)

2000 Ann Twinam,
Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial
Spanish America (Stanford University Press, 1999)

1999 Jeffrey Pilcher,
¡Que Vivan Los Tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (UNM Press, 1998)

1998 Paul Vanderwood,
The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at
the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Stanford University Press, 1998)

1997 Karen Powers,
Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the State in Colonial Quito (UNM
Press, 2009)

1994 Frederick M. Nunn,
The Time of the Generals: Latin American Professional Militarism in World
Perspective (University of Nebraska Press, 1992)

1992 Donna Guy,
Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (University of Nebraska Press, 1991)

1990 William H. Beezley,

“Holiday Days, Holy Days: Mexican Virtue on Parade: An Examination of Nineteenth-Century Celebrations”