Michael Matthews

Biography

Growing up between Vancouver, Canada, Lima, Peru, and Barcelona, Spain, Michael Matthews developed an early childhood interest in how global forces of capitalism articulate themselves in different ways at the local level (although he didn't even know it). He received his doctorate in History from the University of Arizona (a degree signed by the former Secretary of Homeland Security and the Regents of Arizona) and he has studied and taught Latin American and World History for over fifteen years. Since then he has transformed his dissertation (based on research undertaken in Puebla, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, and Mexico City, Mexico and Austin, Texas) into a manuscript that was published in 2013 by the University of Nebraska Press, a study that examines the cultural dimensions of railroad development in Mexico between 1876 and 1910. Most recently, he completed an edited volume, Mexico in Verse: A History of Music, Rhyme, and Power, published in 2015 by the University of Arizona Press. He is also an avid watcher of Jeopardy.

Research Interest

Modern Mexico, Latin America, World History, Social and Cultural History, Gender and Sexuality