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Co-sponsored by Clements Center for Southwest Studies at ����ר�� and , Mexico City. 

Co-organized by Erika Pani (El Colegio de México), Paolo Riguzzi (El Colegio de México), David A. Vázquez Valenzuela (Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila), and Ariel Ron (����ר��). 

This two-part symposium brings together historians of Mexico and the United States to explore how the republic was reinvented and reconfigured, on both sides of the border, after having been almost destroyed by war. Americans conceived the period after the Civil War as that of Reconstruction, while Mexicans spoke of the republic’s Restoration after the wars of Reform and Intervention. Both labels speak to reality transformed, but also to wishful thinking and different aspirations. Symposium participants from the United States and Mexico will examine in parallel chapters the different visions of what should become of the North American republics after the wars of Reform and Intervention in Mexico and the Civil War in the US; the problems and challenges faced by those who strove to put nation and republic back together; the impact of war and its political, social and economic reverberations.

The symposium will gather first in Fall 2026 at El Colegio de México in Mexico City, and again in Spring 2027 at ����ר��’s main campus in Dallas, Texas.

Participants include:

Kate Masur, Northwestern University, “The Reconstruction Constitution;”

Cath Andrews, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, “‘A Popular Democratic Government […] Based Upon the Equality of Man’? A New Constitutional Settlement for a Victorious Republic, Mexico 1867-1882;”

Chris Bonner, University of Maryland-College Park, “Henry Highland Garnet and the Meanings of Postwar Emigration;”

Fernando Castrillo, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, “Federal Justice, State Sovereignty, and Political Centralization: Analyzing the Revolution of Constitutional Restoration in Mexico, 1869-1874;”

Sven Beckert, Harvard University, TBD;

Sandra Kunz, Colegio de México, “Mexico in the world: 1867-1876;”

Greg Downs, University of California-Davis, “Occupation, Demobilization, and the Army in the United States;”

Héctor Strobel, Instituto Moro, “The Demobilization of the Liberal Army after the War of intervention, 1867-1876;”

Ben Johnson, Loyola University Chicago, TBD;

David Vazquez, Universidad Autonóma de Coahuila, “Pacifying a Blazing Border: The Administrations of Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada and Their Border Policy;”

Noam Maggor, Queen Mary University London, “Money, Public Debt and Economic Development;”

Paolo Riguzzi, Colegio de México, “The Effects of War and the Political Economy of Stagnation in Mexico’s Restored Republic: The Management of Budget, Debt, Money and Currency (1867-1878);”

Charles Postel, San Franciso State University, TBD;

Daniela Marino, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, “Changes in Indigenous Property Rights in Post-Colonial Central Mexico;”

Cori Simon, University of Oklahoma, TBD;

Romana Falcón, Colegio de México, “The Great Arch;”

Joshua Paddison, Texas State University-San Marcos, “Reconstructing Sex: Religion, Race, and the U.S. Government’s Policing of Sexuality, 1865-1883;”

Pablo Mijangos, ����ר��, “Managing Religious Governance without Patronage: The Early Years of Church-State Separation in Mexico (1867-1882);”

Thavolia Glymph, Duke University, “‘Do Lord, Remember Me:’ Women’s Work in the Reconstruction South;”

Irina Córdoba, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, “The Reasons for Litigation: The Experiences of Some Women in Mexico City in the Face of Institutional Changes.”

Image: "Entrada Triunfal de Benito Juárez a la Ciudad de México," Antonio González Orozco (1967), Museo Nacional de Historia, Castillo de Chapultepec, México.