Rachel Newman

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Rachel Newman

Assistant Professor of History

Department/Office Information

History

Contact

rnewman@colgate.edu

Rachel Grace Newman is a historian of modern Mexico with particular interests in migration, family, and social inequality. At �󷢲�Ʊ, she teaches on these themes and other topics in modern Latin American, global history, and historical methods.

Her book manuscript, The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite, is under contract with the University of California Press. She has published related research in the Journal of Social History that won an award from the Latin American Studies Association's Mexico section. Her first book, based on her Master's thesis, was published in 2014.

With a background in the interdisciplinary fields of Latin American Studies and regional studies, Prof. Newman enjoys bringing perspectives from scholars with different methodologies into her teaching and research. She has also translated academic works from Spanish to English and enjoys writing and sharing her work in both languages. To help Latin American history reach a broader audience, she hosts interviews with scholarly authors for .

Prof. Newman was trained at Yale University, the Colegio de Jalisco in Zapopan, Mexico, and Columbia University. She previously taught at Smith College. She is originally from the California Bay Area, and she has also researched and studied in various places in Mexico (Chiapas, Guadalajara, and Mexico City).

Prof. Newman's book manuscript The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite is under contract with the University of California Press.

This project was supported by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award among other grants, and the resulting dissertation was recognized by the Latin American Studies Association’s Mexico section. Related to this project, Prof. Newman published an essay in an edited volume in Mexico in 2020, and she has published an article in the Journal of Social History (Summer 2023), which won the Best Article in the Social Sciences Award from LASA's Mexico section.

Previously, she published a book on Mexican migrant children and education programs based on her research as a Master’s student in western Mexico.

HIST108/ALST 208, Modern Latin America
HIST 199, History Workshop
HIST 229, Latin American Migrations
HIST 386, Mexico and the United States
CORE C171, Mexico

Books
Under contract	The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
2014	Los niños migrantes entre Michoacán y California. Pertenencia, Estado-nación y educación, 1976-1987. Zapopan, Jalisco: El Colegio de Jalisco.
Peer-reviewed articles
2023	“The Right to a Favor: International Scholarships, Clientelism, and the Class Politics of Merit in Post-Revolutionary Mexico.” Journal of Social History, vol. 56, no. 4 (June 2023): 828-855.
2013	“Etnia, nación y jerarquía en la literatura infantil estadounidense sobre México, 1909-1939.” Intersticios Sociales. Zapopan, Mexico: El Colegio de Jalisco. Year 3, no. 5.
Peer-reviewed book chapters
Under review	"'This is Me, the Professor': Indigenismo and the Anthropologist Pablo Velásquez Gallardo’s Production of Knowledge in Midcentury California," for volume on Migrant Knowledge in the Americas, eds. Fabio Heupel Santos and Kevan Aguilar.
2020	“Pensar el intercambio académico como un flujo migratorio: el caso de los estudiantes mexicanos en Estados Unidos” for Historias entrelazadas: el intercambio académico en el siglo XX. México, Estados Unidos, América Latina, ed. Sebastián Rivera Mir. Toluca, Mexico: El Colegio Mexiquense.
Book reviews
Forthcoming	Susana Sosenski, The Fear of Robachicos in Mexico: Media, Childhood, and Child Kidnapping, 1900-1968. American Historical Review.
2020	Adrián Félix, Specters of Belonging: The Political Life Cycle of Mexican Migrants. Boom: A Journal of California.
2019	Eileen Ford, Childhood and Modernity in Cold War Mexico City. Cultural and Social History, vol. 16, no. 5.
2018	Ruben Flores, Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico’s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States. The Latin Americanist, vol. 62, no. 2.
2016	Mary Kay Vaughan, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Painter. Pepe Zúñiga and Mexico City’s Rebel Generation. Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 48, no. 2.
2011	Martha Vergara Fregoso et al., Educación Intercultural: un estudio de las comunidades indígenas en Jalisco. Estudios sobre las culturas contemporáneas, vol. XVII, no. 33.
Public Engagement
2020	“Schools for All. The Campaign for Desegregation in El Monte,” in East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, ed. Romeo Guzmán, Rutgers University Press.
2017	Interview on television program “American History,” C-SPAN 3.
2017	“Las tensiones en la migración de estudiantes mexicanos a Estados Unidos: pasado y presente.” Distancia por tiempos (education blog for the Mexican magazine Nexos).
2016	“A Truth that had to be Told: Uncovering the History of School Segregation in El Monte.” Tropics of Meta (blog).

Prof. Newman's translations of articles originally composed in Spanish have appeared in the journals Latin American Perspectives, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, and Intercultural Communication Studies.

2024	Best Article in the Social Sciences, Latin American Studies Association-Mexico Section
2020	Honorable Mention, Dissertation Prize, Latin American Studies Association-Mexico Section
2018	Doris G. Quinn Dissertation Completion Fellowship
2017	Teaching Scholars Fellow, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University
2015	Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grant, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
2015	Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, U.S. Department of Education
2015	Grant-in-aid, Rockefeller Archives Center
2014	Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, Social Science Research Council