Saludos! My name is Madeleine Olson, and I am currently a Ph.D. Candidate studying at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally from Marietta, Georgia, I attended the tiny giant, Rollins College in Orlando, Florida, graduating cum laude with a BA in History and Anthropology in 2016. Shortly after, I moved out to Austin, Texas to pursue my Ph.D. in History at UT, with a special focus on modern Mexico. I passed my comprehensive exams in May of 2019, spent eighteen months conducting research between Mexico, the United States, and Italy, and now am finishing up my dissertation.
Although growing up learning Spanish and Latin laid the groundwork for my passion for studying the history of Catholicism in Mexico, it was not until living in Buenos Aires, Argentina for the better portion of 2015 that I decided to dive right into Latin American history. The guidance of an invaluable undergraduate mentor helped my interests and background coalesce to studying the Catholic Church in Mexico during the twentieth century, and I was able to complete and defend a thesis for honors in the major on the topic.
My Ph.D. research explores the development of the relationship between the Mexican Catholic Church and the Vatican during the twentieth century by focusing on ecumenical relations, or how different religious groups interact. My current research examines several cases of violent episodes committed by Catholics against Protestants in Mexico from roughly 1945 until the 1960s. While Mexico is traditionally thought of as a staunchly Catholic country (which it is, with close to 90% of the Mexican population currently identifying as Catholic), within the past fifty years, Protestant practice, particularly Evangelicalism, grew relatively strong. Catholics began to push back against this influx through various methods, from one end of the spectrum with Bishops writing letters of concern in local newspapers, to the other side with church burnings, explosions of Protestant clergy, and cases of lynchings. I am particularly fascinated with how the webs of complicity towards these crimes began to form between local and state governments and religious hierarchy which left many of these cases unpunished. Religious violence against Protestants was not specific to Mexico during this time; Brazil, Argentina, among other countries all experienced an upsurge of this form of violence. As the Vatican is the root of the Catholic Church worldwide, I study how Vatican policy about ecumenical relations plays in these dynamics on a specific, working, local level. Currently, I am under the direction of Associate Professor of History, Dr. Matthew Butler.
Outside of my personal research, I work in the UT History Department as a Teaching Assistant and Supplemental Instructor for a variety of courses. Additionally, I work in the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services, helping to develop and support online courses in collaboration with professors across the division. Previously, I worked as a strategic tutor in Student Services for UT Intercollegiate Athletics, which was a fantastic opportunity to continually work closely with students.
Over the years, as a result of my interests and my academic life, I have found that my education, hobbies, and feminism are intricately intertwined. As I have grown my inventory of and equipped myself with knowledge, so too have I grown in my process of applying my repertoire of criticism to my journey. We often hear, “We do not write to make ourselves understood; we write to understand,” meaning that throughout the course of writing, and by extension the process of writing on social media platforms over time, we slowly find our voices, styles, and preferences. We’re able to more clearly distinguish our “thing” (in many pieces of writing this is the thesis) by spending time crafting our writing. Hence the birth of this baby, my blog.
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