955 Schermerhorn Extension
Columbia University
1200 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, New York 10027
Professor Claudio Lomnitz works on the history, politics and culture of Latin America, and particularly of Mexico. He has a PhD from Stanford in 1987, and his first book, Evolución de una sociedad rural (Mexico City, 1982) was a study of politics and cultural change in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Following the publication of this book, he developed an interest in conceptualizing the nation-state as a kind of cultural region, a theme that culminated in Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in Mexican National Space (University of California Press, 1992). In that work, he concentrated on the social work of intellectuals, a theme that he developed in various works on the history of public culture in Mexico, including Modernidad Indiana (Mexico City, 1999) and Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minnesota, 2001).
About a decade ago he began working on the historical anthropology of crisis and published Death and the Idea of Mexico (Zone Books, 2005), a political and cultural history of death in Mexico from the 16th to the 21st centuries. His subsequent book, The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magón (Zone Books, 2014), is about exile, ideology and revolution. A collection of his essays was published under the title La nación desdibujada (Ediciones Malpaso, 2016). In 2021 Lomnitz published a family memoir titled Nuestra América: My Family in the Vertigo of Translation, what received wide critical acclaim. His most recent work is on violence and the rise of a new State in Mexico, an initial research result in the area, was published as El tejido social rasgado (Ediciones ERA, 2022), an English translation is in preparation with Duke University Press under the title Islands of Rights in a Sea of Extortion: On Mexico’s State. A companion volume, titled El canibalismo hoy: Siete ensayos de teología política is currently in press with Ediciones ERA.
Professor Lomnitz also writes for non-academic venues. He is a regular contributor to the Mexico City Press, and is recognized as a writer and dramaturgist. His play El verdadero Bulnes is about intellectuals and power, and was written in collaboration with his brother, theater director Alberto Lomnitz, it won Mexico’s National Drama Award in 2009. More recently La Gran Familia, a piece of musical theater also co-authored with his brother, on the hypertrophy of the family and its relationship with the anxieties of governance, was set to stage by Mexico’s National Theater Company. In 2020, Prof. Lomnitz was elected member of Mexico’s prestigious El Colegio Nacional.
Prof. Lomnitz is currently teaching an innovative course, “Mexico’s Disappeared Practicum,” in coordination with Mexico’s Comisión Nacional de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas, that analyzes forced disappearances in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico.
955 Schermerhorn Extension
Columbia University
1200 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, New York 10027
Professor Claudio Lomnitz works on the history, politics and culture of Latin America, and particularly of Mexico. He has a PhD from Stanford in 1987, and his first book, Evolución de una sociedad rural (Mexico City, 1982) was a study of politics and cultural change in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Following the publication of this book, he developed an interest in conceptualizing the nation-state as a kind of cultural region, a theme that culminated in Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in Mexican National Space (University of California Press, 1992). In that work, he concentrated on the social work of intellectuals, a theme that he developed in various works on the history of public culture in Mexico, including Modernidad Indiana (Mexico City, 1999) and Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minnesota, 2001).
About a decade ago he began working on the historical anthropology of crisis and published Death and the Idea of Mexico (Zone Books, 2005), a political and cultural history of death in Mexico from the 16th to the 21st centuries. His subsequent book, The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magón (Zone Books, 2014), is about exile, ideology and revolution. A collection of his essays was published under the title La nación desdibujada (Ediciones Malpaso, 2016). In 2021 Lomnitz published a family memoir titled Nuestra América: My Family in the Vertigo of Translation, what received wide critical acclaim. His most recent work is on violence and the rise of a new State in Mexico, an initial research result in the area, was published as El tejido social rasgado (Ediciones ERA, 2022), an English translation is in preparation with Duke University Press under the title Islands of Rights in a Sea of Extortion: On Mexico’s State. A companion volume, titled El canibalismo hoy: Siete ensayos de teología política is currently in press with Ediciones ERA.
Professor Lomnitz also writes for non-academic venues. He is a regular contributor to the Mexico City Press, and is recognized as a writer and dramaturgist. His play El verdadero Bulnes is about intellectuals and power, and was written in collaboration with his brother, theater director Alberto Lomnitz, it won Mexico’s National Drama Award in 2009. More recently La Gran Familia, a piece of musical theater also co-authored with his brother, on the hypertrophy of the family and its relationship with the anxieties of governance, was set to stage by Mexico’s National Theater Company. In 2020, Prof. Lomnitz was elected member of Mexico’s prestigious El Colegio Nacional.
Prof. Lomnitz is currently teaching an innovative course, “Mexico’s Disappeared Practicum,” in coordination with Mexico’s Comisión Nacional de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas, that analyzes forced disappearances in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico.
