HIST 1820 - [U.S. Borders, North and South]

(crosslisted) AMST 1820, LSP 1820
(HB) (GLC-AS, HA-AS, HST-AS)

Spring. Not offered: 2023-2024. Next offered: 2024-2025. 3 credits. Student option grading.

MC. 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 receives a disproportionate amount of attention from policymakers, journalists, and artists, while our northern border is largely unfamiliar to most Americans. This course offers a necessary corrective: a comparative examination of these two North American borderlands, from their 16th-to-18th century colonial antecedents to contemporary challenges related to commerce, environmentalism, indigenous rights, immigration, border fence construction, drug smuggling, and pandemic-related travel restrictions. The course demonstrates that both the US-Mexico and US-Canada border zones have been, and remain, sites of conflict and cooperation, nationalism and globalization, sovereignty and subordination. (HNA)