Episode 9 with Pamela Radcliff

UC San Diego Professor Pamela Radcliff has recently published a new history of modern Spain entitled Modern Spain: 1808 to the Present.  In this episode, we discuss the challenges overcome and insights gained from this project, starting with how Radcliff developed a new framework for the history of modern Spain that neither told a narrative of failure nor presented a revisionist story that ignored the darker sides of the modernization process.  Instead, she explains how she provides a history of Spanish “modernity with all its warts” even as she navigates the politically polarized historiographies of the Second Republic and Civil War periods and concludes by grappling with the current situation in Catalonia, for instance.  In short, the episode provides a behind-the-scenes look at the development of a book that is sure to prove a new foundation for students and scholars of modern Spain.

The Episode

The Guest

Pamela Radcliff is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, San Diego, where she has also served as Chair for the past seven years.  She received her B.A. from Scripps College (1979) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University (1990).  She is the author of several books and numerous articles on popular mobilization, gender and women’s politics and civil society in 20^th century Spain.  She has published three single-authored books: From Mobilization to Civil War: the Politics of Polarization in the Spanish City of Gijon, Making Democratic Citizens in Spain: Civil Society and the Popular Origins of the Transition, 1960-1978 and the History of Modern Spain, 1808-Present.

Suggested Reading

• Alvarez Junco, José and Adrian Shubert, eds.  Spain since 1808.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Bayly, C. A.  The Birth of the Modern World,1780-1914:  Global Connections and Comparisons.  Malden: Blackwell, 2004.
• Carr, Raymond.  Spain, 1808-1975.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
• Herr, Richard.  An Historical Essay on Modern Spain.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
• Mazower, Mark.  Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century.  New York: Vintage Books, 1998.
• Radcliff, Pamela Beth.  History of Modern Spain, 1808-Present.  Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.
• ———.  Making Democratic Citizens in Spain: Civil Society and the Popular Origins of the Transition, 1960-1978.  Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011.
• ———.  From Mobilization to Civil War: the Politics of Polarization in the Spanish City of Gijon.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Ringrose, David.  Spain, Europe and the “Spanish Miracle” 1700-1900.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Vincent, Mary.  Spain, 1833-2002: People and State.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.