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At a time when Canada’s southern neighbor is engaged in the construction of a massive wall along its southern border in an attempt to bar the entry of undocumented migrants, concerns about the impact that wall will have on border communities of all kinds reverberate throughout North America. These include the concerns of members of the Tohono O’odham Nation that their community, whose traditional lands are already transected by the U.S.-Mexico border, will be further disrupted by an intrusive physical barrier that will interfere with the movement of both people and wildlife in the region.  

With the international borders that transect the North American continent as our primary focus, members of this seminar will consider the power of such boundaries to divide and to connect, to define and to exclude, at various stages in the history of Canada, the United States and Mexico. What can borders and borderlands history reveal that a singular focus on national history may obscure? How have both the U.S.-Mexico border and the 49th parallel been imagined in popular culture and film, and how has this shaped what they signify and the ways each has been managed? What role do class, race and gender play in determining who may readily cross particular boundaries and how does the way in which one is positioned in relation to a border affect its power? And how has the work of border and borderlands historians complicated our understanding of both ways in which national borders function and key moments in Canadian, U.S. or Mexican history? Specific topics include the racialization of the Canada-U.S. and U.S.-Mexico borders; the environmental and economic impact of these borders; their impact on Indigenous communities located along them; the impact of the enforcement of exclusionary law and policy at the borders over time and efforts by individual migrants to avoid or subvert the constraints imposed on movement across them.  

This is a history course designed to help students develop a critical understanding of both border and borderlands histories in North America and of comparative and transnational methodologies. This course will also provide students with an opportunity to hone their ability to critically evaluate historical evidence and scholarly arguments, and to develop scholarly arguments of their own.

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