Alejandro Quintana

Alejandro Quintana is assistant professor of history at St. John's University since 2008. He received his Ph.D. in history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2007. Before joining St. John's University, he was a visiting professor at Connecticut College. His academic interests include the cultural legacies of authoritarianism, nationalism, sovereignty, state formation, and democratic processes in nineteenth and twentieth century Latin America, especially Mexico. In 2010 he published Maximino Ávila Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico. The book was translated into Spanish and published in Mexico the following year as: Maximino Ávila Camacho y el Estado unipartidista: La domesticación de caudillos y caciques en el México posrevolucionario. In 2012 he published Francisco Villa: a Biography, as part of Greenwood’s biographies series.

His current research project analyzes the intellectual evolution of major Mexican thinkers during the process of Mexican independence (e.g. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, Lucas Alamán, José María Bustamante). The goal is to better understand general issues of state formation and national identity and, in particular, the role that Mexican Creole national identity may or may not have played in the creation of the modern Mexican state.

Prof. Quintana's pedagogical approach is based on the Writing Across the Curriculum movement, which uses a variety of pedagogical techniques to help students understand course materials, enhance their reading and writing abilities and improve critical thinking.