Lisa Ubelaker Andrade
I am a fourth year graduate student, with specializations in 20th century Latin America and U.S. International history. My dissertation traces the rise of U.S.-produced mass media in Ecuador and Argentina. As an undergraduate at Swarthmore College I began research on the connections between the U.S. government's Good Neighbor Policy and the expansion of Selecciones del Reader's Digest magazine in Buenos Aires. I began to see the World War II era as a watershed moment for the rise of transnational mass media, when government involvement, diplomacy, private business, and consumer culture seemed to converge. My dissertation expands on this theme, connecting the rise of transnational mass media outlets with inter-American diplomacy and the history of geography. I focus on three major media forms: mass-produced maps (on high demand during the war), the rise of Selecciones del Reader’s Digest; and the popular consumption of the radio programming of Ecuador-based Evangelical missionary radio station HCJB. I am particularly interested in the intricate ways in which international and national politics converged in the production of these medias, and how their consumption played a part in national histories and social/cultural movements.
I am completing my research in the United States, Ecuador and Argentina, thanks to funding from Yale's International Security Studies, the Social Science Research Council IDRF, and Fulbright. At Yale, I work with Gil Joseph, Seth Fein, Stuart Schwartz and Lillian Guerra. Please contact me with any questions.
