Jocelyn Olcott

Associate Professor of History
Overview
Jocelyn Olcott is Associate Professor of History and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. Mexico. Her first book, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, explores questions of gender and citizenship in the 1930s. Her second book, International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History considers the history and legacies of the United Nation’s first world conference on women in 1975 in Mexico City (Oxford University Press, forthcoming Spring 2017). Her current project, a biography of the activist and folksinger Concha Michel, a one-time Communist who became an icon of maternalist feminism and a vocal advocate for recognizing the economic importance of subsistence labors, is under contract with Duke University Press. The book follows Michel's life story from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth to examine the ways that the concept, labor, and policies surrounding “motherhood” articulated with major shifts in political-economic thought — from late-nineteenth-century liberalism to revolutionary nationalism, populism, modernization theory, dependency theory, and neoliberalism.
Fellowships, Supported Research, & Other Grants
Fellow awarded by Institut d'Études Avancées - Nantes (2017 to 2018)
Frank Kenan Fellow awarded by National Humanities Center (2013 to 2014)
Fellow awarded by Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University (2009 to 2010)
Olcott, JH. International Women's Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History (Accepted). New York: Oxford University Press, July 3, 2017. (Edited Book)
Cano, G, Olcott, J, and Vaughan, MK. Género, poder y politico en el México posrevolucionario. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.
Olcott, J, Vaughan, MK, and Cano, G. Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico. Duke University Press, 2006.
Olcott, J. Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Duke University Press, 2005.
Olcott, J. "Megan Threlkeld, Pan American Women: U.S. Internationalists and Revolutionary Mexico, reviewed for Diplomatic History." Diplomatic History 41.3 (March 2017): 659-662.
Olcott, BJ. "Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States by Heidi Tinsman." Women's Studies 45.4 (May 18, 2016): 415-418. Full Text
Olcott, J. "Review of Rosana Blanco Cano, Cuerpos disidentes del México imaginado." Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe (2013).
Olcott, J. "Review of Sonia Lipsett-Rivera, Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1865." American Historical Review (2013).
Olcott, J. "Review of Stephanie Smith, Gender and the Mexican Revolution: Yucatán Women and the Realities of Patriarchy." The Americas 66 (January 2010): 401-402.
Olcott, J. "Empire in Exile: Transnationalizing the Cultural Production of Resistance." Diplomatic History (2010).
Olcott, J. "Review of Joanne Hershfield, Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936." American Historical Review 114 (April 2009): 463–464-463–464.
Olcott, J. "Historia de las mujeres en España y América Latina (4 vols.)." Gender and History 21 (April 2009): 220-22.
Olcott, J. "Review of Stephanie Mitchell and Patience A. Schell, eds., "The Women’s Revolution in Mexico, 1910-1953"." Hispanic American Historical Review 89 (February 2009).
Francois, ME, and Olcott JH, . "A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920." Journal of Latin American Studies (2007).
Pages
Olcott, J. "Mujeres, historias y sociedades: Latinamérica siglos XVI al XXI." Ed. Moroni Spencer Hernández de Olarte and Natalia Montes Marín. Toluca: Fondo Editorial Estado de México, 2016. (Foreword)
Olcott, J. "Dictionary of American History, Supplement: America in the World 1776 to the Present on “Feminism, Women’s Rights” and “International Women’s Year, 1975." Ed. Edward Blum. Farmington, Michigan: Charles Scribner’s Sons and Gale Cengage Learning, 2016. (Essay)
Olcott, J. "From the time of creation: Legacies and unfinished business from the first International Women's Year Conference." Women and Girls Rising: Progress and Resistance around the World. June 19, 2015. 21-31. Full Text
Olcott, J. "A happier marriage? Feminist history takes the transnational turn." Making Women's Histories: Beyond National Perspectives. December 1, 2013. 237-258.
Olcott, J. "Transnational Feminism: Event, Temporality, and Performance at the 1975 International Women’s Year Conference." Cultures in Motion. Ed. DT Rodgers. Princeton University Press, 2013.
Olcott, J. "The Battle within the Home." Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History. May 1, 2011. Full Text
Olcott, J. "The Battle within the Home: Development Strategies and the Commodification of Caring Labors at the 1975 International Women’s Year Conference." Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History. Ed. L Fink and E al. Oxford University Press, 2011. (Essay)
Olcott, J. "The Politics of Opportunity: Mexican Populism under Lázaro Cárdenas and Luis Echeverría." Gender and Populism in Latin America: Passionate Politics. Ed. K Kampwirth. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. (Essay)
Olcott, J. "Globalizing Sisterhood: International Women’s Year and the Limits of Identity Politics." Shock of the Global. Ed. N Ferguson, C Maier, E Manela, and D Sargent. Harvard University Press, 2010. (Essay)
Olcott, J. "Mueras y Mantanzas: Spectacles of Terror and Violence in Postrevolutionary Mexico." A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War. Ed. G Grandin and GM Joseph. Duke University Press, 2010. (Essay)
Olcott, J. "‘A Plague of Salaried Marxists’: Sexuality and Subsistence in the Revolutionary Imaginary of Concha Michel." Journal of Contemporary History 52.4 (October 2017): 980-998. Full Text
Olcott, J. "Empires of Information: Media Strategies for 1975 International Women’s Year." Journal of Women’s History 24 (2012). (Academic Article)
Olcott, J. "Introduction: Research and Rethinking the Labors of Love." Hispanic American Historical Review 91 (2011). (Introduction)
Olcott, J. "Cold War Conflicts and Cheap Cabaret: Performing Politics at the 1975 United Nations International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City." Gender and History 22 (November 2010): 733-754.
Olcott, J. "‘Take Off That Streetwalker’s Dress’: Concha Michel and the Cultural Politics of Gender in Postrevolutionary Mexico." Journal of Women’s History 21 (2009): 36-59. Open Access Copy
Olcott, J. "Miracle Workers: Gender and State Mediation among Textile and Garment Workers in Mexico’s Transition to Industrial Development." International Labor and Working-Class History 63 (December 2003). (Academic Article) Open Access Copy
Olcott, J. "’Worthy Wives and Mothers’: State-Sponsored Women’s Organizing in Postrevolutionary Mexico." The Journal of Women’s History 13 (2002): 106-131. Open Access Copy