This episode features MSU-Denver history professors David Yee, Monica Black, Matthew Mahr, and Jennifer Koshatka Seman, as well as history student Niko, all in conversation about David's book, Informal Metropolis: Life on the Edge of Mexico City,1940-1976.

In Informal Metropolis: Life on the Edge of Mexico City,1940-1976, David Yee uncovers how this former lake bed grew into the world’s largest shantytown—Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl—and rethinks the relationship between urban space and inequality in twentieth-century Mexico. In doing so, Yee challenges many of the established narratives about this period in Mexico City (and Mexico broadly), showing how people used the government to create their own urban space.

David Yee is a history professor at MSU-Denver. David teaches classes in Latin American and Mexican history.

Reviews of Informal Metropolis:

https://online.ucpress.edu/msem/article-abstract/41/2/336/212492/Review-Informal-Metropolis-Life-on-the-Edge-of?redirectedFrom=fulltext

https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/130/3/1289/8253144?redirectedFrom=fulltext#google_vignette

Anahi Russo Garrido is the Associate Professor and Chair/Director of Gender, Women and Sexualities Studies/The Gender Institute for Teaching and Advocacy, GITA at MSU-Denver.

We are so excited to have her as our guest on our very first episode of this podcast, thank you Professor Russo Garrido!

Anahi's book, Tortilleras Negotiating Intimacy: Love, Friendship, and Sex in Queer Mexico City is the first ethnography in English to focus primarily on women’s sexual and intimate cultures in Mexico. In it, Professor Russo Garrido explores “'Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Otros Amores de Familia' and the adoption of lesbian polyamories following the 2010 marriage reform that legalized same-sex marriage in Mexico City" among other intersectional histories in this fascinating book.

We are happy to have MSU-Denver history student Nate Rodriguez join us for this interview.

Reviews of Tortilleras:

https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2657&context=jiws

Video of Tortilleras discussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T2jJzELC0s