- The Frontera Effect

Catalog description

An investigation into the question of authorized identity and social hierarchy generated from a history of policies regulating border-crossing from Mexico to the United States. Students will examine the myths and the realities of rhetoric surrounding the U.S./Mexico border wall, and the frontera effect (the border effect) that influences the American psyche. Students study key historical landmarks that have fortified the essence of division beginning at the border and spreading across the country, to consider present-day policies and imagined narrative that inform our understanding of power and identity based on a physical and a psychological border. Theory and practice combine in this course as students study the geopolitical psychology of border divisions as a prelude to field trips to meet with human rights activists in Western New York who advocate for undocumented dairy farm workers, and to tour the backstretch of the Saratoga thoroughbred racetrack to meet a community of border-crossers in Saratoga Springs.