In 1845, the northern boundary of Mexico lay just a dozen miles from today’s SOU campus. In the Mexican-American War, the United States conquered roughly half of Mexico, moving the border more than 600 miles to the south. Ever since then, both countries have lived with a muddled memory of this experience. The border has moved over people, and people have moved across the border. In fact, the two countries’ populations, economies, and political histories are so closely interrelated that we may meaningfully ask, “Where does one country end and the other begin?” This course is a lecture series (with extended time for discussion) presented by SOU faculty who have explored this historical and cultural middle ground from a wide range of academic perspectives. It brings together Chicano literature, Spanish literature, history, and anthropology professors to examine the complex relationships between the U.S. and Mexico and among the people and places that belong to both worlds.
NOTE: The faculty presenters are: Alma Rosa Álvarez, “The History and Politics of Chicano Identity”; Enrique Chacón, “Ambiguous Border: The Representations of the U.S.-Mexico in Film”; Sean McEnroe, “The Imagined Communities of the Mexican-American War”; Mark Axel Tveskov, “The Archaeology of the Battle of Buena, 1847: La Angostura and the Construction of Manifest Destiny.”