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Podcast: New Books in Latino Studies
Episode: Ruben Flores, “Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico’s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
Description: Ruben Flores is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. His book Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico’s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the winner of the 2015 book award of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Flores recast the long U.S. civil rights movement by framing it within the exchange of ideas between Mexican and U.S. pragmatists. In a thoroughly research transnational history he demonstrates how post-revolutionary Mexican reformers adopted John Dewey’s pragmatism and Franz Boas’s cultural relativism in fostering assimilation of diverse native...