HIST 4295 - US Borders North and South

(crosslisted) LSP 4295, AMST 4295
(HA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Co-meets with HIST 6295/LSP 6295/AMST 6295.

M.C. Garcia, J. Parmenter.

The borders that separate the United States from Canada and Mexico are among the longest in the world. The southern border with Mexico, however, receives a disproportionate amount of attention from policymakers, journalists, and artists, while our northern border is largely unfamiliar to most Americans. This upper-level seminar offers a necessary corrective: a comparative examination of the political, economic, and cultural history of these two North American borderlands. The US-Mexico and US-Canada border zones are sites of conflict and negotiation, nationalism and globalization, sovereignty and multiculturalism. The seminar examines the continuities and discontinuities in the history and evolution of America’s territorial borders from the colonial era to the present. (HNA)