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Chris Kyle

Associate Professor kyle@uab.edu
University Hall (UH) 3125
(205) 975-6181

Research and Teaching Interests: Political economy of contemporary Latin America, especially Mexico Historical anthropology of Mexico

Office Hours: By appointment

Education:

  • BA, Fort Lewis College, Humanities
  • MPhil, Columbia University, Anthropology
  • MA, Columbia University, Anthropology
  • PhD, Columbia University, Anthropology

After teaching at several schools in New York City, plus two years at the University of Oklahoma, Chris Kyle joined the UAB faculty in the fall of 1999. He is the author of Feeding Chilapa: The Birth, Life, and Death of a Mexican Region (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), the coeditor (with Rani T. Alexander) of “Beyond the Hacienda: Agrarian relations and socioeconomic change in rural Mesoamerica” (special theme issue of Ethnohistory, 2003), and the author of several articles on economic and political aspects of rural Mexico.

Kyle is currently engaged in research in two areas. The first involves the establishment of European-style towns and cities in sixteenth century New Spain (contemporary Mexico), particularly in regions where Augustinian friars established convents amid large indigenous populations. The second involves contemporary economic and political processes in southern Mexico. This work addresses the sociocultural consequences of newly enacted legislation designed to reorganize and strengthen the historically ineffectual Mexican legal system.

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