Steve Bunker in the woods with a sport coat but no tie.

Steven Bunker

Associate Professor

Education

  • PhD, Texas Christian University, 2006

Research Areas

  • Latin American History

About

Research Interests

  • Latin American History
  • Mexican History
  • Modernity, Material Culture, and Consumption
  • Cultural, Economic, and Business History

Courses Taught

  • Mexican History Through Film (HY 300)
  • Seminar in Latin American Studies (LAS 396/HY 300)
  • Colonial Latin America (HY 237)
  • Modern Latin America (HY 238)
  • Drugs, Booze and Mexican Society (HY 300)
  • Mexico since 1810 (HY 377)
  • U.S. Relations with Latin America (HY 474/574)
  • Literature of Latin America (HY 605)
  • Undergraduate Research Seminar in Latin American History (HY 430)
  • American Civilization Since 1865 (HY 204)

Conference Presentations

  • “Transatlantic Retailing: The Franco-Mexican Business Model of fin-de-siécleDepartment Stores in Mexico City.” International Congress of Americanists Conference, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, July 20, 2012.
  • “Politicizing the Purchase: The Unión Mercantil Cigarette Boycott in Late-Porfirian Mexico City.” Latin American Studies Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 26, 2012.
  • “Masculine Spaces, Gender Construction, and Consumer Seduction in Late-Porfirian Department Stores.” Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Conference, Park City, UT, March 29, 2012.
  • “`More Popular than Pulque’: Ricardo Bell, Porfirian Payaso Extraordinaire.” XIII Congress of Mexican, United States and Canadian Historians, Querétaro, Mexico, October 26-29, 2010.
  • “Competence, Corruption, Contraband, and Cooked Books: José Yves Limantour and the Impediments to Market and Fiscal Modernization in Late Porfirian Mexico.” Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Conference, Boulder, Colorado, April 2010.
  • “`More Popular than Pulque’: Ricardo Bell, Porfirian Payaso Extraordinaire.” Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 2009.
  • “All the World’s a Store: The Transformation of Mexico City’s Commercial Architecture from the Reforma to the Revolution.” American Historical Association 2008 Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 2008.
  • “El robo-homocidio de la joyeria La Profesa: Memoria de un crimen común. ” VIème Colloque International México-Francia: Migrations et sensibilités: Les Francais au Mexique—XVIIIéme-XXIème siecles, Université de Nantes, Nantes, France, November, 2007.
  • “El consumo, la modernidad, y la mission civilisatrice: los grandes almacenes y la literatura de Auguste Génin durante el Porfiriato.” A public presentation given at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades–Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico, June 25, 2007.
  • “Let There Be Light!: The Contested Reconstruction of the Valenciana Clothing Store in Porfirian Mexico City.” Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 2007.
  • “Shopping Toward Citizenship: Auguste Génin and the French Mission Civilisatrice in Porfirian Mexico.” XII Congress of Mexican, United States and Canadian Historians, Vancouver, Canada, October 2006.
  • “How Far to Make a Sale?: Distributing Modernity Beyond the Porfirian Metropolis.” Rocky Mountain Conference for Latin American Studies, Tucson, Arizona April 2005.
  • “Commercializing Rituals of Rule: The Centro Mercantil Inauguration, Mexico City, September 1899.” Social Science History Association, Chicago, Illinois, November 2004.
  • “Peddlers into Princes: The Retail and Industrial Network of the French Barcelonnette Community in Porfirian Mexico.” Latin American Studies Association 2003 XXIV International Congress, Dallas, Texas, March 2003.
  • “‘Obsequio a Nuestros Favorecedores’: The Palacio de Hierro Department Store Agenda for the Year 1900.” Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Conference, Tempe, Arizona, February 2003.
  • “An All-Consuming Passion: Shoplifting and Other Expressions of Illegal Consumerism in Porfirian Mexico City.” AHA/Conference on Latin American History 2001 Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, January 2001.
  • “Ernesto Pugibet: Porfirio Díaz’s Point Man for Progress.” X Congress of Mexican United States, and Canadian Historians, Fort Worth, Texas, November 1999.
  • “Marketing Cigarettes, Marketing a Regime: The Case of the Buen Tono Cigarette Company.” AHA/Conference on Latin American History 1999 Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 1999.

Awards and Honors

  • RGC Research Grant, The University of Alabama (2014)
  • Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies Thomas McGann Award (outstanding book on Latin American Studies published in 2012), for Creating Mexican Consumer Culture in the Age of Porfirio Diaz (2013)
  • LASA Mexico Humanities Book Award (outstanding book on Mexico published in the humanities in 2012), for Creating Mexican Consumer Culture in the Age of Porfirio Diaz (2013)
  • Travel Grant, Williams’ Fund, The University of Alabama (2012)
  • Highly Commended Article Award, Emerald Literati Network,”Transatlantic Retailing,” (2013)
  • Active and Collaborative Learning Grant Recipient, Fall Semester (2010)
  • Travel Grant, Williams’ Fund, The University of Alabama (2010)
  • Active and Collaborative Learning Grant Recipient, The University of Alabama  (Spring 2009)
  • Travel Grant, Williams’ Fund, The University of Alabama (2007)
  • Selected Member of the Mexico-Francia Research Group, Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades-Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Puebla, Mexico) and the Université de Nantes, Nantes, France (2007)
  • RGC Research Grant, The University of Alabama (2007)
  • Travel Grant, Williams’ Fund, The University of Alabama (2006)
  • Travel Grant, Paul Boller Fund, Texas Christian University (2005)
  • Thomas F. McGann Memorial Prize for Best Article, Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies (1998)
  • Research Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Government of Canada (1997; Renewed 1998, 2 year total)
  • Best Latin American Paper, Southwestern Social Sciences Association (1997)
  • Ida Green Fellowship, Texas Christian University (1995)
  • Top Student, Honours History Program, University of British Columbia (1995)

Selected Publications

Recent Publications

  • Current Book Project: Ricardo Bell and the British Clown Invasion of Latin America (working title).

Books, Articles, and Book Chapters

  • Creating Mexican Consumer Culture in the Age of Porfirio Díaz, 1876-1911. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2012).
    • Recipient of the “Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies 2013 Thomas McGann Award” and the “LASA Mexico 2013 Humanities Book Award.”
  • “Le vol avec homicide de la bijouterie ‘La Profesa’: Mémoire d’un crime commun,” book chapter in Migrations et sensibilités: les français au Mexique XVIIIe – XXIe siècles, directed by Javier Pérez Siller and Jean-Marie Lassus (Rennes: PUR-BUAP-Université des Nantes, 2014).
  • “Consumption and Material Culture from Pre-Contact through the Porfiriato,” book chapter co-authored with Victor M. Macías y González, in A Companion to Mexican History and Culture, William H. Beezley, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2011).
  • “Consumption and Material Culture in the Twentieth Century,” book chapter co-authored with Victor M. Macías y González, in A Companion to Mexican History and Culture, William H. Beezley, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2011).
  • “El robo-homocidio de la joyería La Profesa: un crimen transnacional,” in En la encrucijada. Historia, marginalidad y delito en América Latina y los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, siglos XIX y XX, Jorge Alberto Trujillo Bretón, ed. ( Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2010).
  • “Transatlantic Retailing: The Franco-Mexican Business Model of fin-de-siècle department stores in Mexico City.” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 2, no. 1, 2010: pp. 41-60.
  • “‘Consumers of Good Taste’: Marketing Modernity in Northern Mexico, 1890-1910.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 13, no. 2, Summer 1997: pp. 227-269.

Book Reviews & Review Essays

  • “First Approaches Towards Understanding Mexico City’s Culture of Consumption. ” Review Essay of Jürgen Buchenau, Tools of Progress: A German Merchant Family in Mexico City, 1865-Present; Marie E. Francois, A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920; and Julio Moreno, Yankee Don’t Go Home! Mexican Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920-1950, in Journal of Urban History 36, no. 1 (2010): 111-115.
  • “The General and the Jaguar: Pershing’s Hunt for Pancho Villa: A True Story of Revolution and Revenge,” by Eileen Welsome. The Historian, 71, no. 4 (2009): 869-870.
  • “The Imagined Underworld: Sex, Crime, and Vice in Porfirian Mexico City,” by James Garza. The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History 65:2 (October 2008): 290-292.
  • “The Colonial Spanish-American City: Urban Life in the Age of Atlantic Capitalism,” by James Kinsbruner. New Mexico Historical Review 83:2 (Spring 2008): 269-270.
  • “The Development of Mexico’s Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night,” by Dina Berger. The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History 64:1 (July 2007): 112-114.

Encyclopedia Entries

  • “Porfiriato: Interpretations,” with William H. Beezley, in Michael S. Werner (ed.) Encyclopedia of Mexico, vol. II (Chicago: Dearborn Publishers, 1997): 1169-1173.