Dr William A. Booth

About

My doctoral thesis focussed upon the Marxist left in 1940s Mexico, arguing that the left subordinated its Marxist ideology to the dominant ‘oficialista' strain of nationalism, while also being weakened by factionalism and undermined by a complicity with authoritarianism. I argue that the Cold War came to Latin America much earlier, much more strongly, and more from within than is usually acknowledged. My teaching areas include nineteenth and twentieth century Latin America, gender in Latin American history, U.S.-Latin American relations and modern Mexican history. Before LSE, I taught at the University of Warwick and UCL. Current writing projects are: Marxism and Nationalism in early Cold War Mexico; Langston Hughes in Mexico; How the Mexican left viewed fascism. My next big research project will be a brief(ish) survey of the Latin American left(s) in the early Cold War.

I held a full AHRC Doctoral Award (2008-2012) and a Kluge Fellowship (2009).

Teaching

Dr William A. Booth teaches the following course at undergraduate level:

HY239 - Latin America and the United States since 1898

Articles

Forthcoming Article

• “Hegemonic Nationalism, Subordinate Marxism: The Mexican Left in the Early Cold War” in Journal of Latin American Studies

2012

• “Mid-Century Communisms: A Schematic Approach?” in The International Newsletter of Communist Studies, XVIII (2012), pp 403-10

Book Reviews

2016

• P.Drinot and A. Knight (eds.). The Great Depression in Latin America, in History, Vol. 101, Issue 347 (2016)
• R. Keller, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution, in Cold War History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2016), pp 333-5

2015

• D. Spenser, Stumbling Its Way through Mexico, in Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 47, No. 2 (2015), pp 423-5
• K. Wooley Martin, Isabel Allende’s ‘House of the Spirits’ Trilogy, in Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2015), pp 374-5

2014

• A. Kiddle and M. Muñoz (eds.), Populism in Twentieth Century Mexico, in Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2014), pp 187-9

2012

• D. Cohen, Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in Postwar United States and Mexico, in Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2012), pp 622-3

2011

• A. Navarro, Political Intelligence and the Creation of Modern Mexico, 1938-1954, in Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 43, No. 4 (2011), pp 820-2

Others

2016

• Essay: “Curating the Pantheon in Mexico: History and Memory” for the Age of Revolutions blog (18th July 2016)

2005

• Revised and updated Faces of Latin America by Duncan Green for its third edition (Latin America Bureau, 2006)

2004

• Country Profile: Mexico in New Internationalist (Issue 373, p. 36)

Conference Papers

2016

• Radicals under the Radar (University of Essex/University of Notre Dame): “Crossing, Passing, Kissing, Cussing: Langston Hughes in Mexico”
• SLAS Conference (University of Liverpool): “The Case for an ‘Early Cold War’ in Latin America”
• Global Histories of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left (LSE): “A Prehistory of Revolution: Some Aspects of the Latin American Left in the Early Cold War, 1945-59”
• IHR Latin American Seminar (Senate House): “(Trans) Nationalism: Migrant and Diasporic Radicalism in Early Cold War Latin America”

2015

• Radical Americas Symposium (UCL-IA): “Langston Hughes in Mexico”

2014

• SLAS Conference (Birkbeck College): “Fiction of Memory and Memory of Fiction: Communism in Mexican Writing during the Cold War (and Beyond)”
• Radical Reflections: The 20th Anniversary of the EZLN Uprising (Cambridge): “The Print Media Reaction to the EZLN Uprising”
• Radical Americas Symposium (UCL-IA): “Radical Politics in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy”

2013

• Radical Americas Symposium (UCL-IA): “North American Marxisms, 1945-48”

2012

• Institute for the Study of the Americas PhD Workshop: “Contextualising the Mexican Left, 1945-8”
• ESSHC (University of Glasgow): “The Mexican Communist Party in Comparative Perspective: Towards a Schema for the Postwar Conjuncture”

2011

• Local Communisms Conference (University of Glamorgan): “Hegemonic Nationalism, Subordinate Marxism: The Case of Mexico”
• PILAS Conference (University of Cambridge): “Traitors, Splitters and the Language of Faction: The Mexican Left in 1947”

2010

• The Cold War and the Americas Conference (ISA, London): “The Marxist Round Table in Cold War Context”
• LSE Cold War Seminar: “The Mexican Left in the Early Cold War”

2009

• CCBH-IHR Summer Conference: “Atlantic Diffraction: Contrasting U.S. and British Views of Mexico during the Early Cold War”