Session Abstract

To date, borderlands theory and practice has been recognized as at the cutting
edge of American Studies, re-imagining the center of that enterprise and
helping construct a method for studying the U.S. transnationally. In the
discipline of history, in contrast, the field has been largely confined to the
study of the southwest or, more expansively, the American West. It is only now
beginning to affect the U.S imaginary more centrally. This panel would bring
together three generations of borderlands scholars, each of whose enterprise
has re-positioned the centrality of the borderlands to the dynamics of U.S.
history:  David Gutierrez, UC San Diego, whose current project
discusses "shadow citizenship" practices of Mexican, Asian, and Jewish residents of the U.S.; Nicole Guidotti-Hernandez, University of Arizona, whose work on gender, violence, and citizenship transnationally runs from articles on Dora the Explorer, to a late 19th century cookbook, to California lynching and Yaqui genocide; and Katherine Benton-Cohen, whose first book, Borderline Americans, reinterpreted the Bisbee deportation brilliantly, and whose new work is on the Dillingham Commission.