PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
TOPIC: THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDERLANDS

HIST 3310-003
TTH 12:30PM-1:50—102 Dallas Hall
Timothy Bowman—214-768-2967
 

In this course, we will examine the history of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands from the political establishment of the borderline in 1848 to the 9/11 era. Although we will study the borderlands from a regional perspective, we will also consider how the concept of “borderlands” has become fertile ground for analyzing broader questions about how the interaction, contestation, and exchange between cultures, empires, and nations produces new ideologies, identities, and social formations. Recent scholarship on the borderlands has also been at the center of explorations of nation-building and transnational processes such as migration and economic globalization. Building upon this scholarship, this course will focus on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in order to explore the links between the global political economy and the social construction of race, ethnicity, gender, community, and nation.

Readings include:  1) Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire; 2) Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History; 3) Sam Truett and Elliott Young, Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History; 4) Benjamin Johnson, Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and its Bloody Suppression turned Mexicans into Americans; 5) Katherine Benton-Cohen, Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands; 6) Sarah Deutsch, No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940; 7) Alexis McCrossen, Land of Necessity: Consumer Culture in the United States-Mexico Borderlands; 8) Juan Mora-Torres, The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo León; 9) David Dorado Romo, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez; 10) Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol.