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Sandra Aguilar

Sandra Aguilar

Dr. Sandra Aguilar

Associate Professor of History

Office: Comenius Hall 302
Phone: 610-625-7957
Email: aguilars@moravian.edu

  • B.A., Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, Mexico
  • M.Phil, University of Oxford
  • Ph.D., University of Manchester

Teaching: I offer courses in colonial and modern Latin American and Mexican history. I also teach seminars of race, food, class and gender in Latin America. 

Current Research: My research explores food and foodways from the perspective of women by looking at nutrition discourses and daily practices in Mexico between 1920-1960. I emphasize how cooking and eating became an arena to define and transform the working class, and the implications of this process to the reproduction of race and gender. 

Selected Publications

Articles, Chapters and Encyclopedia Entries:

  • “Between Women: Female Health Workers and the Struggle to Transform Diets in Rural Mexico, 1920-1960.” Anuario De Historia De América Latina, 59, 2023. pp. 41–63.  

  • "El alimento más completo: debates y prácticas sobre el consumo de leche en México," História, Ciências, Saúde - Manguinhos, 28:4, 2021, pp. 1201-1219.

  • "Alimentación, nutrición y raza en el México posrevolucionario (1930-1950)" in El hambre de los otros. Ciencia y políticas alimentarias en Latinoamérica, siglos XX y XXI, ed. Stefan Pohl-Valero and Joel Vargas Domínguez, Universidad del Rosario: Bogotá, Colombia, 2021. 
  • "Homemaking in 1950s Mexico: Women, Class and Race through the Kitchen Window" in Food Studies in Latin American Literature: Perspectives o the Gastronarratives, ed. Rocío del Aguila and Vanesa Miseres, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2021.
  • "‘Las penas con pan son menos’: Race, Modernity and Wheat in Modern Mexico." Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 87:1, 2020
  • "Raza y alimentación en el México del siglo XX," Revista Interdisciplina, 7:19, 2019, pp.119-138.
  • "Mole and Mestizaje: Race and National Identity in twentieth-century Mexico," Food, Culture & Society, 21:5, 2018, pp. 600-617.
  • "Industrias del hogar: mujeres, raza y moral en el México posrevolucionario," Revista de Historia Iberoamericana, 9:1, 2016.
  • Entry on “Chocolate”, in Eric Zolov (ed.), Iconic Mexico: An Encyclopedia from Acapulco to Zócalo, ABC-CLIO, 2015.
  • “Food and Technology in 1940s and 1950s Mexico,” in Araceli Tinajero and J. Brian Freeman (eds.),Technology and Culture in Twentieth Century Mexico, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2013.
  • “Nutrition and Modernity: Milk Consumption in 1940s and 1950s Mexico, Radical History Review, Special Issue on Radical Foodways, 110 (Spring), 2011, pp. 36-58.
  • “La mesa está servida: comida y vida cotidiana en el México de mediados del siglo XX,” Revista deHistoria Iberoamericana, 2:2, 2009, pp. 52-85.
  • “Alimentando la nación: género y nutrición en México (1940-1960),” Revista de Estudios Sociales, Special Issue on History of Food and Food in History, 29 (April), 2008, pp. 28-40
  • “Rural-Urban Migration in Latin America,” entry in Encyclopedia of the Modern World. 1750 to the Present,New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  • “Cooking Modernity: Nutrition Policies, Class, and Gender in 1940s and 1950s Mexico City,” The Americas, 64:2 (October), 2007, pp. 177-205.
  • "Chocolate", in Eric Zolov (ed.), Icons of Mexico, ABC-CLIO, forthcoming.
  • "Cooking Technologies and Electrical Appliances in 1940s and 1950s Mexico," in Araceli Tinajero and J. Brian Freeman (eds.), Technology and Culture in Twentieth Century Mexico, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2012.

Book Reviews:

  • Review of Germán Patiño Ossa, "Black Cookstove: Meditations of Literature, Culture, and Cuisine in Colombia", Confluencia, 37:1, (fall) 2021.
  • Review of Ann Shelby Blum, Domestic Economies: Family, Work, and Welfare in Mexico City, 1884-1943. H-Childhood, H-Net Reviews. August, 2010. URL: 
  • Review of Jocelyn Olcott “Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” Journal of Peasant Studies,35:2 (July), 2008, pp. 353-355.
  • Review of Anny Brooksbank Jones and Ronald Munk “Cultural Politics in Latin America,” Bicentenario, 2:3, 2003, pp. 181-183.