People

Frances Ramos

Associate Professor

CONTACT information and cv

Office: SOC 215
Email: framos@usf.edu
Website
Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 2005

TEACHING

I teach surveys of Latin American history as well as distinct courses on Mexican history and the Iberian world. My classes address both sweeping transformations—such as conquest, revolution, and dictatorship—and the everyday ways people responded to political, economic, and social change. In all my courses, students develop critical thinking skills by analyzing a wide range of primary sources, including paintings, photographs, cartoons, song lyrics, and popular films.

I also lead undergraduate and graduate research and readings seminars. These include courses on the Inquisition, where students examine historical cases involving heresy, crypto-Judaism, and bigamy, as well as other seminars on the Iberian world from the late fifteenth through the early nineteenth centuries—such as the graduate readings seminar Florida, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic World.

RESEARCH

My research focuses on the social, cultural, and political lives of colonial people in Mexico and the wider Spanish Atlantic between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. My first book Identity, Ritual, and Power in Colonial Puebla (Winner of the Michael C. Meyer Award for Best Book on Mexico, 2008–2012), explores how public ceremonies reinforced allegiances to city, empire, and church, while also forging, testing, and demonstrating understandings regarding power and politics.

My forthcoming book The Rebirth of the Spanish Empire: War and Sacred Kingship in Early Bourbon Mexico (Cambridge University Press), examines the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713) and the challenges of dynastic transition in mainland New Spain. Historians have generally paid little attention to this transition, often assuming it had an insignificant impact on the Americas. I argue instead that royal authorities carefully controlled the circulation of information and mobilized historical memory to legitimize Bourbon rule. Ultimately, the book shows how the monarchy encouraged an imperial identity that bridged social and geographic divides across the Atlantic world—reshaping our understanding of empire, communication, and identity in the early modern Americas.

My research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

Books