Course Description:
The borderland occupies a prominent space in the political and social imaginations of both the United States and Mexico. For nearly two hundred years the border has provoked intense hostility and rancor. But it has also engendered cooperation and has fueled tremendous prosperity. This course invites students to go well beyond the clichés, stereotypes, and anecdotes that inform most discussions of the border, and challenges them to use the historical record to think and write in innovative ways about the borderland. We will ask: What, if anything, is exceptional about the U.S.-Mexico border? Is there such a thing as either an "open" or "closed" border? Does the border need to be policed? In the borderland, where does hegemony reside?
Proposed Texts:
James Lockhart, "A Historian and the Disciplines," in Of Things of the Indies: Essays Old and New in Early Latin American History (Stanford, 1999), 333-367.
Week 2: Studying Borderlands
Adelman, Jeremy and Stephen Aron. "From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History," American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (1999): 814-41.
Pekka Hamalainen and Samuel Truett, "On Borderlands," Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (September 2011): 338-361.
Week 3: Indigenous Borderlands
Pekka Hamalainen, "The Empire of the Plains," in The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press, 2009), 141-180.
Brian Delay, "Indians Don't Unmake Presidents," in The War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S-Mexican War (Yale, 2008), 141-164.
Week 4: Inventing the U.S.-Mexico Border
Rachel St. John, "A New Map for North America: Defining the Border," in Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Princeton, 2011), 12-38.
Rachel St. John, "The Space Between: Policing the Border," in Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Princeton, 2011), 90-118.
Week 5: Early African American Borderlands
Sarah Cornell, "Citizens of Nowhere: Fugitive Slaves and Free African Americans in Mexico,1833-1857, 1833-1865," Journal of American History 100:2 (September 2013): 351-74.
Karl Jacoby, "Between North and South: The Alternative Borderlands of William H. Ellis and the African American Colony of 1895," in Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History, Truett and Young, eds. (Duke, 2004), 209-240.
WRITING WORIKSHOPS
Week 7: Sonora/Arizona
Samuel Truett, "Industrial Frontiers," in Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S Mexico Borderlands (Yale, 2008), 55-77.
Geraldo Cadava, "La Fiesta de los Vaqueros," in Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland (Harvard, 2013), 57-95.
Week 8: Comparative Borderlands
Kornel Chang, "Policing Migrants and Militants: In Defense of Nation and Empire in the Borderlands," in Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-CanadianBorderlands (California, 2012), 147-178.
Edith Sheffer, "On Edge: Building the Border in East and West Germany," Central European History, Vol. 40, no. 2 (June 2007), 307-339.
Week 9: International Migration
David Fitzgerald, "Colonies of the Little Motherland," in A Nation of Emigrants: How MexicoManages its Migration (California, 2009), 103-124.
Sarah Lopez, "The Remittance House: Dream Homes at a Distance," The Remittance Landscape: Spaces of Migration in Rural Mexico and Urban U.S.A. (Chicago, 2014).
SPECIAL SESSION: DISCUSSION WITH THE AUTHOR
Week 10: Atomic Borderlands
Joseph Masco, "Econationalisms: First Nations in the Plutonium Economy," in The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico (Princeton University Press, 2006), 99-159.
Joseph Masco, "Mutant Ecologies: Radioactive Life in Post-Cold War New Mexico," in The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico (Princeton University Press, 2006), 289-327.
Week 11:
WRITING WORKSHOPS
Week 12: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Border
Kelly Lytle-Hemandez, "The Early Years," Migra! A History of the US Border Patrol (California, 2010), 19-44.
Timothy Dunn, "Operation Blockade/Hold-the-Line: The Border Patrol Reasserts Control," in Blockading the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation that Remade Immigration Enforcement (University of Texas Press, 2009), 51-96.
Week 13: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Border II
Peter Andreas, "The Escalation of Drug Control," in Border Games: Policing the US-Mexico Divide (Cornell, 2009), 51-84.
Peter Andreas, "The Escalation of Immigration Control," in Border Games: Policing the U.S Mexico Divide (Cornell, 2009), 85-114.
Week 14: Beyond Borders
Wendy Brown, "Waning Sovereignty, Walled Democracy," in Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Zone Books, 2010), 7-42.
Saskia Sassen, "Shrinking Economies, Growing Expulsions," in Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard, 2014), 12-79.
Porposed Grading Policy:
Participation (25%)
This is a discussion-based course that depends on active and engaged participation from each student. I expect everyone to come to class having read and contemplated the day's readings (this means not only having read the texts, but also taken notes on them), ready to raise questions and speculate about their importance. Questions to ask yourself in preparation: what did I found particularly surprising? Troubling? Confusing? Inspiring? Bring those reactions to our class discussions!
Writing Workshop, Paper 1 (25%)
Each student will write a 3-5 page narrative based on a common primary document. We will then hold a writing workshop in class during which students will exchange, read, and comment on each other's work. Since each student will have written on the same document
Paper 2 (25%)
The second paper (5 pages) will be based on original research. Each student is responsible for locating a primary source (a document or physical object written or created during the time under study. These sources were present during an experience or time period and offer an inside view of a particular event that exemplifies how culture influences daily life. Examples include: diaries, speeches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, news film footage, autobiographies, official records, poetry, drama, novels,
music, art, or even pottery, furniture, clothing, buildings, etc.) and then offering a brief (5
minute) presentation to the class that explains its historical context and cultural significance. This paper is designed to apply the skills and best practices generated from the first paper/workshop.
Paper 3 (25%)
The final paper (10 pages) will expand upon the first, incorporating new primary and secondary sources to build both a historical narrative and make a historical argument.
Students will also be required to distill their sources and argument into a presentation at the end of the course.