Education
Ph.D. Latin American History, University of Arizona, 1998
M.A. Comparative World History, UC Santa Cruz, 1988
B.A. History and Latin American Studies, University of Virginia, 1984
Constancia Women's Studies, Colegio de Mexico, 1992
Biography
Dr. Marie Francois does research on the history of everyday life in Mexico and Latin America from the 1750s to the early twentieth century. Currently, she is investigating the cultural history of housekeeping in the urban Atlantic World, focusing on laundry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Mexico City. Her publications include a monograph, A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920 (University of Nebraska Press, 2006); "Cloth and Silver: Pawning and Material Life in Mexico City at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century," The Americas 60, 3 (January 2004):325-362, winner of the 2004 Tibesar Prize from the Conference on Latin American History; “Housekeeping, Development, and Culture in Porfirian Chihuahua and Sonora,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 27, 2 (Summer 2011): 281-324; “Products of Consumption: Housework in Latin American Political Economies and Cultures,”History Compass 6, 1 (January 2008): 207-242; “Threads of Identity: Clothing and Work in the Nineteenth Century Iberian Atlantic,” pp. 107-120 in Anna Cristina Pertierra and John Sinclair, eds. Consumer Culture in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; “La lavandería, la producción cultural, y la economía politica en la ciudad de México” (Translated by María Palomar), pp. 33-65 in Susie Porter and María Teresa Fernández Aceves, eds. Género en la encrucijada de la historia social y cultural de México. Morelia, México: El Colégio de Michoacán y CIESAS-Occidente, 2016; and "’Se Mantiene de Lavar’: The Laundry Business in Mexico City, Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Centuries,” pp. 33-55 in Jennifer Aston and Catherine Bishop, eds. Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century: A Global Perspective. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. She has published articles in Mexico in Estudios de Historia Novohispana (1999) and the Historia de la vida cotidiana en México series published by El Colegio de México and El Fondo de Cultura Economica (2005).
Dr. Francois is also involved in the development and leadership of the University Experience Program, offering first, second and transfer year seminars and mission-focused high impact practices to students across majors.
Representative Courses Taught
- HIST 420 History of Mexico
- HIST 421 The Mexican Revolution
- HIST 360 Colonial Latin America
- HIST 361 Modern Latin America