Eleanor Laughlin
Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar
PhD Student
University of Florida, Gainesville
Dr. Eleanor A. Laughlin received a Richard E. Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar award in Spring 2011 to conduct research related to Maximiliano (Charro) and Maximiliano muerto: The Democratization of the Emperor's Image During the French Intervention in Mexico (1862-67). At the time, she was a doctoral student at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Laughlin specializes in the art of Modern Europe and Latin America, particularly the politics of representation in multi-cultural contexts. Her research focuses on social roles created for and by subjects using representational strategies such as allegory, portraiture, and costume in the late colonial and post-colonial periods.
Title of Research : Maximiliano (Charro) and Maximiliano muerto: The Democratization of the Emperor's Image During the French Intervention in Mexico (1862-67).
While at UNM, Laughlin drew upon the library archives to consides representations which were employed as both a justification of French control in Mexico, and as a demonstration of Mexican resistance within the rhetoric of national power. Her study offers a unique perspective within post-colonial studies and art history because it provides an example in which the colonized and the colonizer were speaking a similar visual language about Mexico, although with different goals. While at UNM she looked at the unique primary resources available in the Maximilian-French Intervention Archive, and in particular at the cartes-de-visite collections in the Southwest Center for Research.
