HIST C/HIST C Dallas Hall 337 Spring 2011 Office Hours: W Dallas Hall /

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1 North American Borders Professor Benjamin Johnson HIST C/HIST C Dallas Hall 337 Spring 2011 Office Hours: W Wednesday 2-4:50 bjohnson@smu.edu Dallas Hall / Course Description This course introduces students to the major concepts, developments, and problems in the history and historiography of modern North American borders. Out central theme is the process of border-making: the ways in which nation-states claiming exclusive territorial sovereignty redrew the continent s map, intersecting with other ways of organizing space, allowing some people and things to cross while barring others. The readings are equally concerned with the changing ways that diverse peoples challenged these projects or sought to use or alter them for their own purposes. An overarching question of the seminar is how a consideration of these topics recasts our understanding of the national histories of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Learning Outcomes Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: --Discuss the major ideas and events related to the history of borders in North America --Analyze, evaluate and discuss secondary scholarship on this topic, focusing on both authors methodologies and conclusions. --Develop and execute research based on scholarship (undergraduates) and develop and execute an essay that evaluates a body of scholarship on a particular topic (graduate students) related to borderlands history. --Demonstrate the ability to use multi-disciplinary approaches for understanding complex issues related to borders. Required Texts Pekka Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire (Yale, 2008) Sean Kelley, Los Brazos De Dios: A Plantation Society in the Texas Borderlands, (LSU, 2010) Kelly Lytle-Hernández, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (California, 2010) Sheila McManus, The Line Which Separates: Race, Gender, and the Making of the Alberta- Montana Borderlands (Nebraska, 2005) Anthony Mora, Border Dilemmas: Racial and National Uncertainties in New Mexico, (Duke, 2011) Juan Mora-Torres, The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo León, (Texas, 2001) Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, 2004) Daniel Nugent, Spent Cartridges of Revolution: An Anthropological History of Namiquipa, Chuhuahua (Chicago, 1993)

2 David Dorado Romo, Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez, (Cinco Puntos, 2005) Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the United States (Virginia, 2008) Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (Knopf, 2006) Course Requirements and Notes Seminar discussions drive this course, and even the written work is designed to make our discussions as fruitful as possible. I expect all students to come to class ready to discuss the readings. If you are unwilling or unable to do this, please take another class. Every other week, each student (both graduate and undergraduate) will write a brief (1-2 page) response paper, identifying the main contribution of the week's readings to the field and evaluating it. These responses should be turned in by noon, with one copy going to your instructor s box in the history department and another into a folder in the department common area. Please read your peers work before coming to the class session. For graduate students, Research Hunts will complement these assignments by providing the class with a brief summary of potentially useful primary source material and how this material was located. The intention here is to help us think through some of the practicalities of doing historical research. The final assignment for undergraduate students is to write a brief (10-12 page) history of a particular event, development, or aspect of borderlands history. For the final paper you will show that you can think like an environmental historian by writing a brief environmental history of a particular place, event, or organism. The final assignment for graduate students is to produce a significant (15-20 page) work that demonstrates an ability to productively locate one s own work and interests within the field of borderlands history. This assignment can take one of three forms: 1. A research prospectus for a seminar paper, master s thesis, or doctoral dissertation. You will not actually have to write the paper, although you re certainly welcome to do so at a later point. This assignment will give you a chance to apply what you ve learned in this class towards practical research questions, as well as to think about how to formulate and frame research projects that are focused enough to be doable but large enough to be important. 2. A syllabus for an undergraduate lecture course or seminar on borderland history, with a particular topical interest to you. This should include a week-by-week schedule and a lengthy discussion of the pedagogical rationale behind the readings, films, and images, organization of the course, and assignments you ve chose. In special cases, a proposal for a website or an annotated and edited primary source might substitute for a syllabus. 2

3 3. A historiographic essay on a major theme in borderlands history, surveying the key works and evolving conceptual concerns in the manner that you would do as part of a comprehensive exam in the field. Why is this subfield important? How has it changed over time? What new concerns should it incorporate? Please come and visit me in my office hours, or schedule another time if they are not convenient. I am happy to meet with you to discuss the class, borderlands history, or anything else. Disability Accommodations: Students needing academic accommodations for a disability must first be registered with Disability Accommodations & Success Strategies (DASS) to verify the disability and to establish eligibility for accommodations. Students may call or visit to begin the process. Once registered, students should then schedule an appointment with the professor to make appropriate arrangements. (See University Policy No. 2.4; an attachment describes the DASS procedures and relocated office.) Religious Observance: Religiously observant students wishing to be absent on holidays that require missing class should notify their professors in writing at the beginning of the semester, and should discuss with them, in advance, acceptable ways of making up any work missed because of the absence. (See University Policy No. 1.9.) Excused Absences for University Extracurricular Activities: Students participating in an officially sanctioned, scheduled University extracurricular activity will be given the opportunity to make up class assignments or other graded assignments missed as a result of their participation. It is the responsibility of the student to make arrangements with the instructor prior to any missed scheduled examination or other missed assignment for making up the work. (University Undergraduate Catalogue) Graduate Student Grading contribution to class discussion 20% response papers/book reviews 30% research hunt 10% final paper 40% Undergraduate Student Grading contribution to class discussion 20% response papers/book reviews 40% research paper 40% 3

4 Course Schedule January 19 January 26 Introduction and Orientation Jeremy Adelman 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 (June 1999): Michael Baud and Willem Van Schendel. Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands. Journal of World History 8, no. 2 (Fall 1997): Andrew Graybill and Benjamin Johnson, Borders and Their Historians in North America, Bridging National Borders in North America (2010) Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, Introduction: Making Transnational History: Nations, Regions, and Borderlands, in Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History, eds. Truett and Young (2004) Charles Maier, Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era. American Historical Review 105, no. 3 (June 2000): Borders and the New United States Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground Recommended: Dawn Hall, ed., Drawing the Borderline (1996) February 2 February 9 February 16 February 25 Re-Orienting the Borderlands? Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire Landscapes, Old and New Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes Carolyn Podruchny and Bethel Saler, Glass Curtains and Storied Landscapes, from Bridging National Borders in North America (2010) Bernardo García Martínez, El Espacio del (Des)encuentro, in Encuentro en la frontera: Mexicanos y Norteamericanos en un espacio común (2001) Race on the Line Anthony Mora, Border Dilemmas South Meets North (note change to Friday meeting) Kelley, Los Brazos de Dios Sarah Cornell, Citizens of Nowhere: Fugitive Slaves in Mexico,

5 Karl Jacoby, Between North and South: The Alternative Borderlands of William H. Ellis and the African American Colony of 1895, in Truett and Young, eds., Continental Crossroads (2004) March 2 The Making of the World s Longest Undefended Border Sheila McManus, The Line Which Separates Michel Hogue, Crossing the Line: Race, Nationality, and the Deportation of the Canadian Crees in the Canada-U.S. Borderlands, , in Sterling Evans, ed., The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests (2006) Gerhard Ens, The Border, The Buffalo, and the Métis of Montana, from Sterling Evans, ed., The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests (2006) Recommended: Paul Sharp, Whoop-Up Country (1955); Andrew Graybill, Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, (2007) March 9 Consolidation of the Mexican Border Juan Mora-Torres, The Making of the Mexican Border Recommended: Elliott Young, Catarino Garza s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border (2004) March 23 March 30 April 6 North as West Daniel Nugent, Spent Cartridges of Revolution Friedrich Katz, The Transformation of the Northern Frontier into the Border, in Katz, The Secret War in Mexico (1981) The Mexican Revolution David Dorado Romo, Ringside Seat to a Revolution Benjamin Johnson, The Plan de San Diego Uprising and the Making of the Modern Texas-Mexico Borderlands, in Truett and Young, Continental Crossroads Migration, Nation, and Race Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects Recommended: Bruno Ramirez, Crossing the 49 th Parallel (2001) April 13 April 20 Inside the Border Patrol Kelly Lytle-Hernández, Migra! The Border of the Imagination Sadowski-Smith, Border Fictions 5

6 Bryce Traister, Border Shopping: American Studies and the Anti- Nation, in Globalization on the Line (2002) Recommended: José Manuel Valenzuela Arce, Nuestros piensos. Culturas populares en la frontera México-Estados Unidos (1998) April 27 Class Wrap-Up Anthony Kronman, Introduction, in Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (2007) 6