(Also posted at the Borderlands History Blog)

I did this last year and thought it would be a good thing to do again.  Browsing through the conference program for next month’s Western History Association annual conference, I found the following panels and events that may appeal to borderlanders.  And, once again, borderlands are well represented! The program committee did a pretty good job of not double booking similar themed panels, as inevitably happens, but there are still some tough decision to make – especially for the Saturday 8:30-10:00 slot.  If you are hoping to mix in borderland with some other panels, you will definitely have some tough choices – there are a lot of cool topics being presented. There are some other borderlands/transnational themed papers peppered in other panels, but I am just going to list the full panels that focus on borderlands and transnational topics.  I hope to see everyone there, in the halls, snoozing in the backs of panels, at the bar (me drinking a Sprite, of course), etc…

Wednesday, October 9

5:00-7:00

Showdown on the Border: Civil Discourse for Uncivil Times – Why Does Arizona History Matter for Today’s Politics? 

Chair
– Katherine Morrissey, University of Arizona

Panelists
– Katherine Benton-Cohen, Georgetown University
– Geraldo Cadava, Northwestern University
– Karen J. Leong, Arizona State University
– Eric Meeks, Northern Arizona University

 

Thursday, October 10

8:30-10:00

Taking the Pulse: Vital Signs of Canadian-U.S. Borderlands Interdisciplinary Research

Chair & Comment
–Elizabeth Jameson, University of Calgary

Papers
– Michel Hogue, Carleton University
Capturing Shakopee: Extraordinary Rendition in the Nineteenth-Century North American West
– Susan E. Gray, Arizona State University
The Alchemy of Property: Odawa Colonies and the U.S.-Canadian Border, 1836-1862
– Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Arizona State University
Migration, Enforcement, and Environmental Degradation at the Canada-U.S. Border

Using Microhistories to Check the Vital Signs of the West: Constructing Emancipatory Narratives of the Self in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Chair
– Barbara Berglund, University of South Florida

Papers
– Karl Jacoby, Columbia University
Passing the Line: A Trickster’s Tale from the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
– Samuel Truett, University of New Mexico
Global Histories, Intimate Entanglements: The Travels and Tangled Tales of
an English Globetrotter who became a Mexican Villager
– Ernesto Chávez, University of Texas, El Paso
“My dear Noël”: Ramón Novarro, Noël Sullivan, and the Negotiation of a
Catholic/ Mexican/Gay Identity

10:15-11:45

Gauging the Vitality of Cultural Diversity in the Spanish and U.S.- Mexico Borderlands

 Chair & Comment
– James Brooks, School for Advanced Research

Papers
– Timothy Bowman, West Texas A&M University
Paul S. Taylor and the Changing Nature of White Supremacy in the South Texas Borderlands
– Nicholas Foreman, University of Florida
Continuity of Caste: The Retained Mobility of Free People of Color in New Orleans across Regime Change, 1804-1820
– Jennifer Seman, Southern Methodist University
Faith Healing in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

The Yoeme/Yaqui Past and Its Contemporary Incarnations

Chair
John R. Wunder, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

– Juan Avila, University of California, Davis
Modalities of Resistance in the Yoeme Borderlands
– Andrew Offenburger, Yale University
Modalities of Resistance in the Yoeme Borderlands
– Jane H. Kelley, University of Calgary
Thoughts on Cultural Survival of the Yaqui
– James Hopkins, University of Arizona
The Legal Paradox: Yaqui Autonomy and Relations with the United States
and Mexico

Comment:
– Robert Valencia, Pascua Yaqui Tribe
– Sterling Evans, University of Oklahoma

Friday, October 11

8:30-10:00

Controlling the Border’s Natural and Human Environment: Earth, Water, Drugs, Power, and Lives

Chair
– Benny Andrés, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Papers
– Elaine Carey, St. John’s University
Narco-Texans: Transnational Networks of Distribution, 1920s-1950s
– Celeste Gonzålez de Bustamante, University of Arizona
President Richard Nixon’s “Operation Intercept” in the News: Popular Constructions
of the U.S./Mexico Border
– John J. Dwyer, Duquesne University
Environmental Regulation for Southern California

Comment
– Andrae Marak, Governor’s State University

10:30-Noon

Views of a Transnational West from the Wild West Shows

Chair
– Sterling Evans, University of Oklahoma

Papers
– Gary Moreno, University of Oklahoma
Crossing Cultural Frontiers: Mexican Performers in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
– Adam Grieve, University of Saskatchewan
The Other “Wild West”: Canadian Viewers and Content in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
– Julia Stetler, Buffalo Bill Historical Center
The Cooper-Cody Connection: Representations of the American West in Nineteenth-
Century Germany

Comment
– L.G. Moses, Oklahoma State University

2:30-4:00

Globalizing Borderlands: Tourism, Education, & Environment in a Transnational California

Chair
– Lawrence Culver, Utah State University

Papers
– Jessica Kim, University of Southern California
“Destiny of the West”: Roads, Tourism, and Reconnecting the Western Hemisphere
– Zevi Gutfreund, University of California, Los Angeles
Selective Citizenship: Language Education and National Allegiances in Interwar
Los Angeles
– Sara Fingal, DePauw University
The “Wild and Unconquered” Landscape: Transnational American Communities
in Baja California, Mexico

Comment
– Geraldo Cadava, Northwestern University

Committee on Race in the American West – Arizona’s Real Mavericks: Activists across Political Borders, Then and Now

Chair
– Katherine Benton-Cohen, Georgetown University

Panelists
– Father Peter Neeley, Kino Border Initiative
– William McDonald, Malpai Borderlands Group
– Katherine Benton-Cohen, Georgetown University

Saturday, October 12

8:30-10:00

Committee on Teaching and Public Education, the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Western Region, and the Northern Arizona History Academy Teaching American History Grant Methodologies for Teaching Frontiers, Borderlands, and Imagined Places

Chair
– Lindsey Passenger Wieck, University of Notre Dame

Panelist
– Jason Oliver Chang, University of Connecticut, Storrs
Official and Unofficial Records of Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Chinese
from Mexico
– Melody M. Miyamoto Walters, Collin College
From the Little House to the Big Classroom: Using Laura Ingalls Wilder as a
Primary Source
– Eric J. Morser, Skidmore College
The Lost Tribe of Sicily: Iron Eyes Cody, Keep America Beautiful, and Imagined
Indians in Modern America

Teaching Activities
– Mark Johnson, Concordia International School, Shanghai, China
– Emily Maass, Vail Academy and High School, Tucson, Arizona

Contested Identities and Cultural Hegemony in the Southwest Borderlands

Chair
– Sherry Smith, Southern Methodist University

Papers
– Andrés Reséndez, University of California, Davis
Borderlands of Bondage and the Spanish Campaign
– Kelly Jenks, Fort Lewis College
Paper Civic Identity in the Spanish Colonial Southwest: A Case Study
– William Kiser, Arizona State University
Debt Peonage and Judicial Empowerment in Territorial New Mexico

Comment
– James Brooks, School for Advanced Research
– Ross Frank, University of California, San Diego

African American History in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Chair
– Modupe Labode, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Papers
– Sarah Cornell, University of New Mexico
Rehearsal for the Dred Scott Decision: U.S. policy in Mexico 1839-1857
– Mekala Audain, Rutgers University
West of the Mississippi: Slavery on the Texas Borderlands, 1845-1855
– Rhae Lynn Barnes, Harvard University
Darktown Crossing: Blackface Minstrelsy and Americanization at the US/Mexico Border, 1846-
1920

Comment
– Amy Lippert, University of Chicago

10:30-Noon

The Politics of the Mexican Migrant and the Evolution of the Mexican/U.S. Border

Chair
– Benny Andrés, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Papers
– Jaime R. Aguila, Arizona State University
U.S. Immigration Policy during the Mexican Revolution
– Devon Bridgewater, Arizona State University
El Comité de Repatriación and Mexican Repatriation
– Maru Balandran, University of Chicago
Border Urbanization and the Bracero Program

Comment
– José Angel Hernandez, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

2:30-4:00

Designing Authority: The Varied Economy of Political, Economic, and Cultural Power after the Creation of the U.S.-Mexico Border in 1848

Chair
– Eric V. Meeks, Northern Arizona University

Papers
– George T. Díaz, Sam Houston State University
Making Borders Ports: The U.S. Customs Service on the Rio Grande, 1848-1881
– Katherine Massoth, University of Iowa
“We Have Our Own Ways to Live”: American Indian and Spanish-Mexican
Women’s Struggles for Autonomy in Territorial Arizona
– Bryan Turo, University of New Mexico
Thomas Benton Catron and the Rise of Corporate Enterprise in New Mexico,
1866-1884

Comment
– Katherine Morrissey, University of Arizona

Noon-9:00

U.S.-Mexico Border Tour

This extended field trip, led by retired Arizona State Museum curator Diana Hadley and others, will explore the past and present of the U.S.-Mexico border region. Beginning at noon and returning to the Westin La Paloma Resort in the evening, the tour will include visits to Nogales, Arivaca, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, Altar Valley, and Sasabe, with stops along the border fence and meetings with local ranchers, activists, and border patrol. The bus will leave the Westin La Paloma Resort Lobby at 12 noon and return at approximately 9:00 p.m. This trip is limited to 50 people. Box lunches will be provided.