Profile for Víctor Macías-González
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Víctor Macías‑González
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Professor
History
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Víctor Macías‑González Pronouns: He/Him/His
Professor
History
Specialty area(s)
Latin American, Mexican, Latinx histories and history of race, gender and sexuality. Latin Americanists study the history of nineteen different countries in the Americas, plus the Philippines, Spain, and the U.S.A. I focus on nineteenth-century Mexico, especially the Porfiriato (1876-1911) and the U.S. Southwest. Research interests include diplomacy, transnational migration, Mexican diaspora, consumption and material culture, masculinity, Latin@s in the Midwest, the homophile movement, and LGBTQ history of the Midwest. Service interests include development of outreach programs to increase Latino entry into higher education, graduate, and professional programs, as well as LGBTQ public history programs, and faculty promotion and retention programs. I serve on various professional groups in my field. I chair the U.S.-Canada Organizing Committee of the International Historians of Mexico Conference, serve on the American Historical Association's Committee on LGBTQ Status in the Profession, and on the organizing committee of REDMUGEN, the network for historians of women, gender, and sexuality in Mexico.
Brief biography
2023-24 is my twenty-fourth year at UW-La Crosse. I joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2000, was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2006, and to professor in 2013. In addition to my teaching, advising, research, and service duties in the Department of History, I am affiliated with the Department of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. From Fall 2009 to Summer 2016 , I directed the Eagle Mentoring Program, a retention initiative for high-achieving, historically under-represented, underprivileged second-year students in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. From 2017 to 2020, I coordinated the Faculty Fellows for Retention and Promotion in the CBA at UWL. Since Spring 2022, I serve as CASSH Faculty Fellow for Diversity and Inclusion.
I received my doctorate in Latin American history and letters, with a minor in Early Modern Europe, from Texas Christian University in 1999, and have since taught at the University of Texas at El Paso, and at the University of Minnesota.
My research interests focus broadly on gender, sexuality, class, and material culture of Mexico in the long nineteenth century (1750-1930). I am a specialist of the Porfirian age in Mexico (1876-1911) and my publications have analyzed the Mexican aristocracy, manuals of etiquette, portraiture, genealogy, consumption, and leisure. I am presently completing a monograph on homosexuality in Mexico ca. 1930-1960.
My service interests include closing the achievement gap for historically-underserved populations, increasing the access of minority communities to higher education, and increasing the number of students of color in the graduate school pipeline. I developed and implemented: Parent College (now run by the Admissions Office), the Eagle Mentoring Program (now run by the Division of Diversity and Inclusion), Hekima Scholars (run by the Office of Multicultural Student Services), and LOMP--the Latina Outreach Mentoring Program, occasionally funded through internal grants and staffed by Latina students and Latina/o faculty and staff. We regularly partner with the Arcadia Public Schools on this initiative as funding is available.
I am Mexican-American, my parents were immigrants, and I grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border, in El Paso, Texas. My spouse and I are bibliophiles, enjoy period films, sacred music, documentaries, cooking, and travel.
Current courses at UWL
Spring 2024 I will teach HIS 110, HIS 220, and HIS 360.
Letters of recommendation for graduate/professional school should be requested at least 3 weeks prior to due date. Please meet with me no later than 2 weeks prior to due date. I only write letters for students who have earned a grade of AB or higher in my 200, 300, and 400 level classes. If you don’t meet these criteria, I cannot write for you, and I strongly urge you to select a faculty member with whom you’ve had more contact or better success.
Provide me the following in hard copy (in a folder) and provide the same material in a single e-mail:
- A copy of your c.v or résumé, with major/minor and GPA information listed,
- An information copy of your transcript,
- A list of the courses you took with me (date), preferably with a copy of any term paper or significant project that you want me to mention in your letter, and
- A draft of your statement of purpose for grad or professional school, or the cover letter, if for a job. Please note that I understand this may be a rough draft, but I need to know specifically what kind of program or job you are applying for, why, and details about you I can’t glean from a CV or transcript. If this is for work, attach a copy of the job announcement.
Please provide materials and forms with at least 2 weeks' advance notice if it is the first request. If I already have a letter on file, I need 1 week's advance notice. I insist that you use a “clearing house” for letters when you are applying to multiple schools or jobs, such as the University’s Career Services Office or the Law School Admissions Council. I simply cannot keep up with multiple letters for multiple addresses.
These guidelines are set up so that I can genuinely help in your future endeavors. I appreciate your understanding.
Education
PhD, Latin American History and Letters, Texas Christian University, 1999.
M.A., History, University of Texas at El Paso, 1995.
B.A., Political Science, University of Texas at El Paso, 1992.
Career
Teaching history
HIS 101, 102, 110 (Focus on History of Family, Gender, and Sexuality)
HIS 200: Historiography and Historical Methods
HIS 210: Survey of U.S. History
HIS 220: Survey of Latin American and U.S. Latino History
HIS 240: Survey of European History
HIS 325: America in the Cold War
HIS 336: Hispanics in the United States
HIS 341: Nineteenth-Century Latin America
HIS 342: Twentieth-Century Latin America
HIS 344: Colonial Latin America
HIS 345: US-Latin American Relations
HIS 347: History of Greater Mexico
HIS 354: History of Spain
HIS 356: History of Mexico
HIS 360: Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin America
HIS 490: Historiography Seminar
LS 200: Career Exploration and Planning
UWL 100: First Year Seminar
UWLondon Program (Summers 2016 & 2017).
Professional history
- CASSH Faculty Fellow for Diversity and Inclusion, Spring 2023-Spring 2024.
- CASSH Faculty Fellow for Diversity, Inclusion, and Internationalization Spring 2022-Fall 2022.
- CBA Faculty Retention and Promotion Coordinator, Fall 2017-Summer 2020
- CBA Faculty Fellow for Faculty Retention and Promotion, Fall 2016-2017
- CLS Faculty Fellow for Enrollment, Strategic Recruitment, and Retention Initiatives, Fall 2015-Spring 2016
- Professor of History and WGSS, UW-L, 2013-present.
- Associate Professor of History and WGSS, UW-L, 2006-2013.
- Assistant Professor of History and WGSS, UW-L, 2000-2006.
- Director, Eagle Mentoring Program, UW-L, 2009-2016.
- Director, Institute for Latina/o and Latin American Studies, UW-L, 2001-2012.
- Visiting Associate Professor of History, University of Minnesota, 2008.
- Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Chicano Studies, UT-El Paso, 1999-2000.
Research and publishing
Selected Publications or Presentations
•“La domesticidad homosexual extranjera en México, 1930-1960. Los casos de William Spratling y Witter Bynner.” Provocaciones del Seminario Histórico LGBTTTI Mexicano. Aproximaciones a Nuestras Historias. Vol. 1., ed. Alonso Hernández Victoria. Mexico City: Colectivo Sol, Archivos y Memorias Diversas, UAM, forthcoming.
•“Chapter 16. Being Fronterizo: Life on the U.S.-Mexico border, 1970-1980.” In Critical Storytelling, ed. Carmella Braninger and Julio Enríquez-Ornelas. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
• “Comida de Vigilia: Lenten dishes from the Paso del Norte Region.” Password: The Quarterly Journal of the El Paso County Historical Society. 66, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 13-21.
• with Ariel Beaujot, "Ch. 12: Hear, Here: Mapping Queer Stories in La Crosse, Wisconsin," in Queer Sites in Global Contexts: Technologies, Spaces, and Otherness, ed. Regner Ramos. New York and London: Routledge, 2020.
•“Los homosexuales como sujetos peligrosos en la ciudad de México (1940-1960),” 84-119. Hampones, intocables y pecatrices: Sujetos peligrosos de la Ciudad de México (1940-1960), ed. Susana Sosenski. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2019.
•“Otros camaradas de ruta. Las colaboraciones transnacionales de los editores republicanos españoles y los activistas homófilos norteamericanos en la ciudad de México, ca. 1940-1960,” 223-247. Nuevas Aproximaciones al Exilio. Edited by Aribert Reinmann. Frankfurt A.M. and Madrid: Editorial Vervuert, 2018. https://www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es/FichaLibro.aspx?P1=147840
•“Los amigos inmortales: el peso de la Historia,” in Hacer visible lo invisible. Otras historias de amor en el Museo del Prado. Catálogo. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2017. http://www.tiendaprado.com/es/catalogos/8254-cat-9788484803874.html
•“Leftist Sexual Dissidents and Exiles in Mexico City: The transnational collaboration of Spanish publishers and American Homophile Activists, 1940s-1960s.” Paper Presented at Nuevas Aproximaciones al Exilio Conference, Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, Spain, 16-20 August 2016, sponsored by the European Research Council-sponsored research project on Left-wing Exile in Mexico, 1934-1960.
• "The Transnational Homophile Movement and the Development of Domesticity in Mexico City's Homosexual Community, 1930-70." Gender, Imperialism, and Global Exchanges. Edited by Stephan F. Miescher, Michelle Mitchell, and Naoko Shibusawa. 132-157. Chichester, UK and Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Link
•"Le capital culturel et social de la communauté aristocratique mexicaine à Paris, 1850-1914." Les français au Mexique XVIIIe au XXIe siècle, volume 2: Savoirs, réseaux, et représentations. Edited by Javier Pérez Siller and Jean-Marie Lassus, 189-218. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2014.
Link
• "Transnationalism and the Development of Domesticity in Mexico City’s Homophile Community, 1920-1960.” Gender History 23, no. 3 (Oct. 2014): 519-44.
• Víctor M. Macías González and Anne Rubenstein, eds. Masculinity and Sexuality in Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012. Link
• “Learning the Rules of the Game: Informal Empire and the Mexican Experience at Stonyhurst College, 1805-1920,” in The Victorian World. Edited by Martin Hewitt. Routledge Worlds Series, 2012. Link
• Víctor M. Macías-González and Steven Bunker, "Ch. 3: Consumption and Material Culture from Pre-Contact to the Porfiriato." and "Ch. 4: Consumption and Material Culture in the 20th Century," in A Companion to Mexican History. Wiley, 2011. Link
• "The Case of the Murdering Beauty: Narrative Construction, Beauty Pageants, and the Postrevolutionary Mexican National Myth (1921-1931).” In True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico. Edited by Robert Buffington and Pablo Piccato. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Link
• “Masculine Friendships, Sentiment, and Homoerotics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: The Correspondence of José María Calderón y Tapia, 1820s-1850s.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, 3 (September 2007): 416-35. Link
• “Presidential Ritual in Porfirian Mexico: Curtsying in the Shadow of Dictators.” In Heroes and Hero Cults in Latin America. Edited by Samuel Brunk and Ben Fallaw, 83-108. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2006. Link
• “The Lagartijo at The High Life: Notes on Masculine Consumption, Race, Nation, and Homosexuality in Porfirian Mexico.” In The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901. Edited by Robert McKee-Irwin, Edward J. McCaughan, and Michelle Rocío Nasser, 227-249. New York: Palgrave Press, 2003. Link
Selected Awards
2021 Wisconsin LGBTQ Leaders of Color Award, Our Lives Magazine: Wisconsin LGBTQ News, “Pride In Color” Special Issue, vol. 15, no. 1 (July-August 2021).
2018-2019 Research Fellow, Latino Research Initiative, The College of Liberal Arts, The University of Texas, Austin.
2018 National Endowment for the Humanities, Women's Suffrage in the Americas, Carthage College, Wis., July 23-August 3, 2018.
2015 Equity Prize, The American Historical Association, individual category.
2015 University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents Diversity Award, individual category.
2014-2015 LGBT Studies Research Fellowship, Yale University.
2014 Ann Lydecker Educational Diversity Award, Wisconsin State Council on Affirmative Action, State of Wisconsin Office of State Employee Relations, for development and implementation of Eagle Mentoring Program at UW-L.
2013 Wisconsin Professor of the Year, Council for Advancement and Support of Education and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, U.S. Professor of the Year Awards Program.
2011 Recognition of Excellence Award in Inclusive Excellence, The College of Liberal Studies of the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.
2009 University of Wisconsin System Grant, Closing the Achievement Gap: Promoting Institutional Change to Foster Access and Excellence for Historically Underrepresented Populations. Awarded $30,000 to establish a 2-year pilot Eagle Mentoring Program.
2006 Summer Research Fellowship, Regenstein Library and Center for Latin American Studies, the University of Chicago.
2004 Recognition of Excellence Award in Research and Scholarship, The College of Liberal Studies of the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.
2004 James L. Loveless Award for University Service, Office of International Education of the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.
2003 Friedrich Katz Prize, Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Administrativas, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.
2002 National Endowment for the Humanities “Hispanic Gendering of the Americas” Summer Institute, Arizona State University.
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