Abstract
This reflexión pedagógica discusses the lessons scholars and teachers of Latinx history can learn from the historical vision put forward in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2015 Broadway musical Hamilton. Following a discussion of the origins of Miranda’s Latinx-inflected view of the life and times of Alexander Hamilton, the article places his approach within the context of the existing historiography on US-Latinx history, and assesses the pros and cons, both pedagogical and rhetorical, of taking such a Hamiltonian approach.
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Notes
Here I use the term Latinx as a gender neutral alterative to Latino/a following the usage of Ortiz (2018).
Miranda’s work is part of a longer history, from Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit (1979) to John Leguizamo’s Freak (1997) (Orchard 2016).
The youthful Hamilton’s library contained devotional texts, sermons and works by Alexander Pope, Machiavelli and Plutarch (Chernow 2004, p. 24).
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McManus, S.M. Hip–hop historiography: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and the Latinx historical imagination. Lat Stud 16, 259–267 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-0126-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-0126-y