Module Convenor: Benjamin Smith

The US-Mexican border is one of the most recognisable environments on earth. It's towering red rocks, rolling sand, and awkward cacti formed the context to countless westerns; over the past three decades, they have formed the background to explosive economic development, spiralling drug violence and repeated immigration crises.

This course examines the creation of the US-Mexican border, and its development over the past two centuries. First, the course seeks to introduce students to the idea of the borderlands as a distinct transnational region, where social and cultural mixing is, and has been, the norm. Second. it seeks to focus on certain, more divisive issues, which have shaped both Mexico and the United States. They include nation-formation, racism, speculative capitalism, smuggling, policing, and immigration. Third, it seeks to explain how the border has formed an important if shifting metaphor for both the US and Mexican experience.

Learning outcomes

• Subject knowledge: Students should come away with a clear knowledge of US-Mexican borderlands historiography and history. They should also understand how these tie into national historiographies and histories.
• Key Skills: Students should come away with better written and oral communication skills.
• Cognitive Skills: Students should improve their critical analysis, and their ability to parse complex contemporary issues.
• Subject knowledge: Students should better understand the historical context of certain key contemporary issues, including drug trafficking, immigration, and transnational capitalism

 

Week 1: Introduction to the Course

 

Week 2: What does the border mean?

Greg Granden, End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

Week 3: Wars

Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border, Chapter 2

Brian Delay, War of a Thousand Deserts, Indian Raids and the US Mexican War

Andrew J. Torget and Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle, These Ragged Edges, Histories of Violence along the US-Mexico Border, Chapter 2

 

Week 4: Capitalism and its Discontents

Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border, Chapter 3

Elliot Young, Catarino Garza's Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border

Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Andrew J. Torget and Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle, These Ragged Edges, Histories of Violence along the US-Mexico Border, Chapter 7

 

Week 5: Revolution

David Dorado Romo, Ringside seat to a revolution: an underground cultural history of El Paso and Juárez, 1893-1923

Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa

Andrew J. Torget and Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle, These Ragged Edges, Histories of Violence along the US-Mexico Border, Chapter 11

Jeff Guin, War on the Border

James Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands: anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904-1923

 

Week 6 Reading Week

 

Week 7 Policing the Border

Andrew Graybill, Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American frontier, 1875-1910

William Carrigan, Forgotten dead: mob violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928

Andrew J. Torget and Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle, These Ragged Edges, Histories of Violence along the US-Mexico Border

Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Migra!: a history of the U.S. Border Patrol

Sonia Hernandez and John Moran González, Reverberations of Racial Violence : Critical Reflections on the History of the Border, Chapter 1, 2 and 4

Monica Muñoz Ramirez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas

 

Week 8 Vice

Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border, Chapter 6

Paul Vanderwood, Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint

Paul Vanderwood, Satan’s Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars at America’s Greatest Gaming Resort

Benjamin T. Smith, The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade, Chapter 4

Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, On the Rim of Mexico, Chapter 3

Steven Bender, Run For the Border: Vice and Virtue in U.S.-Mexico Border Crossings, Chapters 3 and 4

George Diaz, Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling across the Rio Grande, Chapter 4

 

Week 9 Drugs

Molly Molloy, El Sicario: confessions of a cartel hit man

Ricardo Ainslie, The fight to save Juárez: life in the heart of Mexico's drug war

Charles Bowden, Murder city: Ciudad Juárez and the global economy's new killing fields

Ioan Grillo, El Narco: inside Mexico's criminal insurgency

 

Week 10: Migration

Levi Vonk and Axel Kirshner, Border hacker: a tale of treachery, trafficking, and two friends on the run

Andrew J. Torget and Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle, These Ragged Edges, Histories of Violence along the US-Mexico Border, Chapter 14