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Louise Walker

Headshot of Louise Walker

Professor of History

Louise E. Walker is a historian of Mexico and Latin America. Her new book, Debts Unpaid: Two Centuries of Conflict in Mexico’s Economy (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press), illuminates how ordinary people fought for economic justice in Mexico from 1808 to 2008. It argues that conflicts over small-scale debts were a stress test for the economic order, showing how power struggles between debtors and creditors shaped economic transformation from the emergence of capitalist relations to the recent global financial crashes. She published an article based on this work in The American Historical Review titled “Everyday Economic Justice: Mediating Small Claims in Mexico City, 1813-1863.” Her research for Debts Unpaid has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society, by the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin.

Professor Walker is the author of Waking from the Dream: Mexico’s Middle Classes after 1968 (Stanford University Press, 2013). It examines how the middle classes shaped the history of economic and political crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, facilitating the emergence of neo-liberalism and the transition to democracy. Waking from the Dream won prizes and honors from the Latin American Studies Association, the Social Science History Association, and the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies.

Professor Walker is also co-editor the special journal dossier “Spy Reports: Content, Methodology, and Historiography in Mexico’s Secret Police Archive,” (Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2013), which brings together historians from the first generation of scholars using this recently declassified archive and presents scholarly articles with transcriptions of related spy reports. And she co-edited Latin America’s Middle Class: Unsettled Debates and New Histories (Lexington Books, 2012), which raises new questions and revisits older debates about studying class and about the role of the middle classes in Latin American history.

Before coming to Northeastern University, Professor Walker was on the faculty at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She teaches courses on colonial and modern Latin American history, social movements, natural disasters, and the history of capitalism.

(SELECTED)

  • Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars, American Council of Learned Societies
  • Winner, 2014 Best Book Award in the Social Sciences, sponsored by the Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section.
  • Honorable Mention, 2014 Allan Sharlin Memorial Award, sponsored by the Social Science History Association.
  • Honorable Mention, 2014 Thomas McGann Book Prize, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies
  • Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies
  • Berlin Prize, American Academy in Berlin
  • Visiting Fellowship, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge
  • Waking from the Dream: Mexico’s Middle Classes after 1968. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013.
  • Editor, with David S. Parker. Latin America’s Middle Class: Unsettled Questions and New Histories. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013.
  • Editor, with Tanalís Padilla. “Spy Reports: Content, Methodology and Historiography in Mexico’s recently-opened Secret Police Archives.” Special dossier of Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 19, no. 1 (July 2013): 1-10.

Related Schools & Departments

  • Education

    PhD, History, Yale University
    BA, History, McGill University

  • Contact

  • Address

    275 Holmes Hall
    360 Huntington Avenue
    Boston, MA 02115

Courses

Course catalog
  • HIST 1200 / 1201: First Year Seminar

    HIST 1200 / HIST 1201

    Provides an introduction to historical methods, research, writing, and argument in which all students produce a substantial research project that passes through at least two revisions, and that is presented publicly to other members of the colloquium.

  • HIST 4701: Capstone

    HIST 4701

    Offers students an opportunity to make use of advanced techniques of historical methodology to conduct original research and write a major, original research paper as the culmination of their work toward the history degree. This is a capstone research and writing seminar for history majors.