The History Department Welcomes Frances Ramos to the Faculty

The History Department welcomes Frances Ramos to the faculty

Frances Lourdes Ramos was born in Miami, Florida, on July 14, 1972. She majored in history and anthropology/sociology and received her B.A. from Florida International University in Miami in 1994. She entered FIU's master's program in history in the fall of 1994, and her thesis focused on mendicant responses to Tridentine reform in sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century New Spain. She received her M.A. degree and a certificate from the Latin American and Caribbean Center in December 1996.

In the fall of 1997, she entered the doctoral program in history at the University of Texas at Austin and defended her dissertation, "The Politics of Ritual in Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico, 1695-1775," on March 3, 2005. She began her field research in Mexico as a Social Science Research Council International Predissertation Fellow (1999-2000), and concluded her investigation in archives and rare books libraries in Puebla, Mexico; Mexico City; and Seville, Spain with a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2001-2002). A University of Texas Harrington Dissertation Fellowship provided needed support during her most intensive phase of writing (2003-2004). Her publications include "Succession and Death: Royal Ceremonies in Colonial Puebla." The Americas 60:2 (October 2003), pp. 185-215, and "Arte efimero, espectáculo, y la reafirmación de la autoridad real en Puebla durante el siglo XVIII: La celebración en honor del Hércules Borbónico" ("Ephemeral Art, Spectacle, and the Reassertion of Royal Authority in Colonial Puebla: The Celebration in Honor of the Bourbon Hercules"). Relaciones 97 (Winter 2004), pp. 179-218.

Professor Ramos brings significant expertise to the History Department’s strengths in Latin American history. It is especially important that she will bring to students knowledge and experience related to Mexico, an important neighbor and, in many ways, partner, of the U.S. This semester she is teaching HIST 3700, History of Latin America, and HIST 4710 Colonial Mexico. She will offer 3700 again in the Spring, as well as Modern Mexico, a sequel to her advanced course. She will serve as Faculty Advisor to Western’s chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honorary society.