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As a historian of Latin American cities, I am interested in the social, political, and cultural forces that shaped urbanization in the twentieth century. My dissertation, “Planning a ‘Mass City’: The Politics of Planning in Mexico City, 1930-1960,” interrogates Mexico City’s transformation into a “megacity” through the lens of urban planning, particularly the planning of the seemingly informal and anarchic peripheries of the city. More broadly, my research places Mexico City within a global flow of ideas about cities and urbanization. My book project, The Shape of a Megalopolis: Urban Growth in Mexico City, 1910-1960, examines the competing visions of the government, intellectuals, and popular groups that ultimately shaped Mexico City’s built environment. In addition to providing a fine-grained social history of the actors that negotiated the building of, and allocation of rights to, the city, my research casts light on the theoretical framework that made this process legible. Together, they made Mexico City a central site where the contours of the twentieth-century city were defined. My research and teaching interests also include the history of migration, the relationship between the social sciences and state policies, and the history of urban planning and architecture.

Emilio de Antuñano. “From the ‘Horseshoe of Slums’ to Colonias Proletarias: The Transformation of Mexico City’s ‘Housing Problem,’ 1930-1960,” Comparativ. Journal of Global History and Comparative Social Research 30, no. 1/2 (2020): 111-27.

Emilio de Antuñano. “A Global History of Slums, Shantytowns, and Improvised Cities,” Journal of Urban History. Prepublished June 1, 2020 (Online before print).

Emilio de Antuñano. “Mexico City as an Urban Laboratory: Oscar Lewis, the ‘Culture of Poverty,’ and the Transnational History of the Slum.” Journal of Urban History 45, no. 4 (2019): 813-30.

Latin American Studies Associations (LASA) International Congress

American Historical Association (AHA) Conference