Javiera Letelier

Cohort Year: 2017
Degrees:
B.A., Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2010, History
M.A., Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2014, History

Advisor: Dr. Heidi Tinsman
First Field: Latin American History
Second Field: World History

Link to CV

Dissertation Title: Gender and Consumption in Chile 1960 – 1973. The Promotion, Sale, and Acquisition of Household Appliances.

Research Abstract: My dissertation examines gender and consumption during “the long sixties” (1960 – 1973) in Chile. It asks how the consumption of household appliances shaped Chilean modernization and debates over democracy. Placing the history of Chilean consumption within a broader transnational context, it analyses the efforts of Chile’s centrist and leftist governments to expand access to appliances to lower and middle-class families, the efforts of Chilean businesses to promote consumption of appliances, and the meaning associated with the acquisition of these appliances for Chileans. I will contribute to scholarship that looks at policies of consumption as crucial to broader state modernization projects and which emphasize the centrality of gender relations to those policies.