Cultures of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Catalog description

In recent years, the U.S. has deported millions of migrants and begun work on a multi-billion-dollar border wall. Although these acts have sometimes seemed unprecedented, they have relied on and reaffirmed earlier attempts to manage mobile communities, police environmental boundaries, and define national identities. In this seminar, we will learn how Natives, Latinxs, whites, and other ethno-racial groups have imagined the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Reading elite aesthetic forms like literature and art alongside pop cultural practices such as newspapers and songs, we will ask and answer a range of questions about this inequitable yet interdependent region: How has the U.S. tried to control Native and Mexican territories? How have conquered people and migrants adapted to and influenced their new homes? How have ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, and class operated on both sides of the border? These historical questions will lead us to a range of theoretical inquiries: What are borders - are they physical boundaries, or are they psychosocial conditions? Similarly, what are nations - are they stable and homogeneous groups, or are they flexible and diverse communities? Ultimately, what are human beings - can they be branded as illegal aliens, or do they have inalienable rights? While we will wrestle with these questions together, we will also work through them independently. In a world increasingly divided between migrants and citizens, we will use writing as a form of critical reasoning, cross-cultural understanding, and political debate.