Pouwels, Joel Bollinger

Dr. Joel Bollinger Pouwels teaches Spanish language and Latin American literature and civilization at the University of Central Arkansas. She earned her Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Dr. Pouwels has published several articles on the intertextuality of historical, journalistic, and fictional discourse in twentieth-century Mexico, with emphasis on journalist-novelists like Martín Luis Guzmán, Luis Spota, and Elena Poniatowska.

Political Journalism by Mexican Women During the Age of Revolution, 1876-1940

2006 0-7734-5874-3
This is the only comprehensive work on the subject of Mexican women’s involvement in journalism from its hidden beginnings in colonial times to the mid-twentieth century. By 1940, a few women had become star reporters in Mexico City, the geographical focus of this study. After an introductory chapter on the colonial roots of women’s journalism, the book focuses on the revolutionary period from 1876 to 1940. During these tumultuous years, a handful of extraordinary women broke into journalism in order to promote various social and political causes. In the process, they expanded women’s journalism beyond the society pages, and made political journalism a respectable career for women. In addition to synthesizing the historical and biographical data, this book compiles and evaluates the widely dispersed, and sometimes contradictory, secondary-source material. The index and exhaustive bibliography, which are usually lacking in Mexican sources, will facilitate future research in this area.