Subject Librarian
Lucinda M. Hall
Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website
Course description
“U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” explores the histories, policies, economies, structures, and cultures of the southern divide from the early nineteenth century to the present day. The U.S.-Mexico border is often understood as a periphery, an edge to the nation, a marginal region of little importance. However, the border is also an interface; a region that facilitates connections, crossings, and junctures. Its importance, this class argues, cannot be overstated. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to borderlands studies will allow us to seek the “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and “how” the border comes into being. This class will emphasize the lived experiences of peoples and communities living along the border by engaging with secondary and primary sources. Further, this class will utilize art, poetry, music, podcasts, and performance as a way to understand how the border was and continues to be contested. While the class moniker identifies only two nations, the plight of indigenous nations’ claim to land, sovereignty, and resources is also studied. Further, by taking a relational ethnic studies approach, the histories of Asian & Asian American, Black, and other racialized peoples on the border are highlighted. Each of these histories is important to understand the origins of the southern divide and how these origins manifested forms of exclusionary nation-building and its shifts over time.
[Source: Registrar, 09/26/2025]; Dist: SOC; WCult:CI
In the Library's collections
You can use one of these subject headings to start your research in the library's online catalog:
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borders in motion picturesThis is a keyword search in the online catalog.
Introductory reading(s)
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Cartography: an introduction
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Call Number: Baker-Berry GA 105.3 .D37 2017ISBN: 9780904482256Publication Date: 2nd ed.This book is part of the British Cartographic Society's "Better Mapping Campaign." It show what works well in map design and to help people who map how they communicate with their viewers. -
El Norte: the epic and forgotten story of Hispanic North America
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Call Number: Baker-Berry E 40 .G53 2020ISBN: 9780802148360A sweeping saga of the Spanish history and influence in North America over five centuries, from the acclaimed author of Empire's Crossroads Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte, the nation has much older Spanish roots--ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today. ... -
La Gran Línea: mapping the United States-Mexico boundary, 1849-1857
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Call Number: Baker-Berry F 786 .R43 2001ISBN: 9780292771116The Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo, which officially ended the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848, cost Mexico half its territory, while the United States gained land that became California, Nevada, Utah, Texas, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Because the new United States-Mexico border ran through territory that was still incompletely mapped, the treaty also called for government commissions from both nations to locate and mark the boundary on the ground. This book documents the accomplishments of both the U.S. and the Mexican Boundary Commissions that mapped the boundary between 1849 and 1857, as well as the fifty-four pairs of maps produced by their efforts and the ongoing importance of these historical maps in current boundary administration. ... -
Mapping the nation: history and cartography in nineteenth-century America
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Call Number: Baker-Berry GA 405.5 .S38 2012ISBN: 9780226740683In the nineteenth century, Americans began to use maps in radically new ways. For the first time, medical men mapped diseases to understand and prevent epidemics, natural scientists mapped climate and rainfall to uncover weather patterns, educators mapped the past to foster national loyalty among students, and Northerners mapped slavery to assess the power of the South. -
The U.S.-Mexican border today: conflict and cooperation in historical perspective
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Call Number: Baker-Berry F 787 .G36 2021ISBN: 9781538131800Publication Date: 4th ed.Systematically exploring the dynamic interface between Mexico and the United States, this comprehensive, richly illustrated survey considers the historical development, current politics, society, economy, and daily life of the border region.
Selected book title(s)
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Border games: policing the U.S.-Mexico divide
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Call Number: Baker-Berry HJ 6690 .A7 2009ISBN: 9780801475405The U.S.-Mexico border is the busiest in the world, the longest and most dramatic meeting point of a rich and poor country, and the site of intense confrontation between law enforcement and law evasion. Border control has changed in recent years from a low-maintenance and politically marginal activity to an intensive campaign focusing on drugs and migrant labor. Yet the unprecedented buildup of border policing has taken place in an era otherwise defined by the opening of the border, most notably through NAFTA. This contrast creates a borderless economy with a barricaded border. ... -
Border tunnels: a media theory of the U.S.-Mexico underground
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781517914295Border tunnels at the U.S.-Mexico border are ubiquitous in news, movies, and television, yet, because they remain hidden and inaccessible, the public can encounter them only through media. Analyzing the technologies, institutional politics, narrative tropes, and aesthetic decisions that go into showing border tunnels across multiple forms of media, Juan Llamas-Rodriguez argues that we cannot properly address border issues without attending to--and fully understanding--the fraught relationship between their representation and reality. Llamas-Rodriguez reveals that every media text about border tunnels, whether meant for entertainment, cable news, video games, or speculative design, implicitly takes a position on the politics of the border. ... -
Fighting for control: power, reproductive care, and race in the US-Mexico borderlands
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781469682617The first birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1937. Since then, Mexican-origin women living in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez have confronted various interest groups determined to control their reproductive lives, including a heavily funded international population control campaign led by Planned Parenthood Federation of America as well as the Catholic Church and Mexican American activists. Uncovering nearly one hundred years of struggle, Lina-Maria Murillo reveals how Mexican-origin women on both sides of the border fought to reclaim autonomy and care for themselves and their communities. ... -
Hyperborder: the contemporary U.S.-Mexico border and its future
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Call Number: Baker-Berry F 787 .R57 2008ISBN: 9781568987064Roving vigilantes, fear-mongering politicians, hysterical pundits, and the looming shadow of a 700-mile-long fence: the U.S.Mexico border is one of the most complex and dynamic areas on the planet today. With more than one million daily crossings, the border has increasingly has become a hotbed for debate. But too often its complexities are viewed through the myopic lens of illegal immigration, ignoring a multitude of other critical issues that include health, the environment, drug trafficking, free trade, and post-9/11 security. Hyperborder provides the most nuanced portrait yet of this dynamic region. ... -
The imaginary line: a history of the United States and Mexican boundary survey, 1848-1857
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Call Number: Baker-Berry F 786 .W44 2007ISBN: 9780875653389The line dividing the United States and Mexico is invisible, "imaginary," drawn through shifting sands and changeable rivers. The economic, social, and political issues surrounding this line, however, are all too real, and the line snakes its way through a history of conflict, through questions of definition, maps and claims of ownership, and personal and political gerrymandering. In The Imaginary Line: A History of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1848-1857, Joseph Richard Werne sets out to explore this border and the men who drew it. ... -
The line becomes a river: dispatches from the border
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Call Number: Baker-Berry JV 6565 .C37 2018ISBN: 9780735217713For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Haunted by the landscape of his youth, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners are posted to remote regions crisscrossed by drug routes and smuggling corridors, where they learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. ...
Other library resource(s)
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US/Mexico border area maps byCall Number: Electronic resourceScanned maps of the US/Mexico border area from the Evans Map Room collection.
These are the same maps viewed in the Evans Map Room during your visit. -
Color image maps [ports of entry, United States-Mexican border] byCall Number: Evans Map Room G 3700 s25 .G4The map room has these and other historical maps of Mexico and the United States. You can see how the borders have changed over time through maps.
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Border songs
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Call Number: Jones Media Music Compact M 1629.6 .M39 B67 2012A compilation of spoken word and music addressing the catastrophic effects of US border policy. -
Borders and boundaries from Oxford Bibliographies Online
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Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199874002Borders and boundaries, commonly defined as the lines dividing distinct political, social, or legal territories, are arguably the most ubiquitous features within the field of political geography. Indeed, borders have become prominent topics of research for a range of scholars from across the social sciences and humanities. This burgeoning, interdisciplinary field of border studies covers a broad range of concerns, including state sovereignty, globalization, territorial disputes, trade, migration, and resource management, among other topics. -
El mar la mar
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Call Number: Jones Media DVD #23109ISBN: 9780781515740Weaves together harrowing oral histories of the [Mexican-American] border region with hand-processed, 16mm images of the flora, fauna and items left behind by those who've made the hazardous trek. Over a black screen, subjects speak of their intense, mythic experiences in the desert: A man tells of a fifteen-foot-tall monster said to haunt the region, while a border patrolman spins a similarly bizarre tale of man versus beast. A sonically rich soundtrack adds to the eerie atmosphere as the call of birds and other nocturnal noises invisibly populate the austere landscape. Emerging from the ethos of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, Sniadecki's attentive documentary approach mixes perfectly with Bonnetta's meditations on the materiality of film. Through their stunning collaboration, they create a mystical, folktale-like atmosphere dense with memories, ghosts and the remains of desire. -
Purgatorio: a journey into the heart of the border
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Call Number: Streaming videoIn this provocative documentary film, director Rodrigo Reyes reimagines the Mexico/U.S. border as a mythical place comparable to Dante's purgatory. Leaving politics aside, he takes a fresh look at the beauty of the border and the people caught in its spell. Shot during a 4-week roadtrip in a dilapidated can with a crew of only three people, Reyes had captured a stunning mosaic of compelling characters and broken landscapes that live on the US-Mexico border, crafting a devastating reflection on the flaws of human nature and the powerful absurdities of the modern world.
Looking for a new way to tell a story?
Are you looking for a new way to tell a story or write a paper? Try ArcGIS StoryMaps. For more information, see this page or contact Lucinda M. Hall.
Finding scholarly articles & journal title(s)
You can find articles about the U. S. - Mexico border region in various magazines and journals. We also have a title which looks specifically at border studies, Estudios Fronterizos. The journal began its life looking exclusively at the Mexican-American border area. To find other articles, you can use HAPI or use the search box at the top of the page.
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Estudios fronterizos
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Call Number: Electronic journalEstudios Fronterizos' purpose is to provide a space to disseminate and raise debate on the acquired knowledge about borderlines in general, as well as border region throughout the world. -
Journal of borderlands studies
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Call Number: Electronic journalThe distinctive purpose of Journal of Borderlands Studies as an international journal is to publish original research covering the development of theories and concepts, methodological perspectives, empirical analysis and policy debate in the field of border studies. The journal is a interdisciplinary forum, which showcases diverse perspectives and analytical techniques. -
Special issue: Forced migration, deterrence, and solutions to the non-natural disaster of migrant deaths along the US-Mexico border and beyond
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Call Number: Electronic special issue... This JMHS special edition represents a collaboration between the University of Arizona’s Binational Migration Institute, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMSNY), and the Working Group on Mapping Migrant Deaths along the US Southwest Border. The Working Group includes scholars and practitioners from California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and New York who have met monthly since October of 2021. The special edition examines in granular detail the causes of migrant deaths, US border enforcement strategies and tactics, migrant death statistics, and the resource and capacity challenges faced by US counties along and leading from the US-Mexico border in investigating these deaths. ... -
Refugee law, US-Mexican politics, and the formation of migrant caravans from International Migration Review
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Call Number: Electronic journal articleIn 2018 and 2019, the Central American “migrant caravans” making their way through Mexico towards the United States attracted vast political and media attention. Although not a new phenomenon, and only making up a fraction of the approximately 400,000 people that annually attempt to cross the Mexico-US border, they gained increased attention in 2018 partly due to Trump's antagonistic response (Gandini, Fernández de la Reguera, and Narváez Gutiérrez 2020, 81–88). ... -
Geopolitics
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Call Number: Electronic journalGeopolitics is an international and multidisciplinary journal devoted to contemporary research on geopolitics. It provides an arena for scholarly analysis addressing the intersection of geography and global politics from various disciplinary and methodological perspectives, and from vantage points embedded in diverse locations. ... -
Chicano database
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Call Number: Electronic resourceThis bibliographic index covers a wide range of materials focused on the Mexican-American and Chicano experience, as well as the broader Latino experience of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans and Central American immigrants since 1992. -
HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index) online
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Call Number: Electronic resourceHAPI is a source for worldwide information about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States, with coverage from 1970 to the present. -
Web of science citation databases
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Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Internet resource(s)
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Association of Borderland StudiesThe Association for Borderlands Studies (ABS) is the leading international scholarly association dedicated to the systematic study and exchange of ideas, information and analysis of international border, and the processes and communities engendered by such borders.
Founded in 1976 with the original impetus for the study of the United States-Mexico borderlands, the Association has experienced a steady expansion and transformation in recent years. -
Borderlands HistoryWelcome to Borderlands History, an academic blog which will promote discussion of issues surrounding the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as well as other borderlands regions.
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Matter of Fact
This episode features a segment on the Mexican-American War, the changes to the U.S. map and mention of manifest destiny. [Last segment] -
No More Deaths/No Más MuertesThe mission of No More Deaths/No Más Muertes is to end death and suffering in the Mexico–US borderlands through civil initiative: people of conscience working openly and in community to uphold fundamental human rights. ...
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U.S./Mexico Border DataGeographic data from New Mexico State University for the U.S./Mexico border region.
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U.S./Mexico Joint Working Commission (JWC)The JWC is a binational group which focuses on cooperating on land transportation planning and the facilitation of efficient, safe, and economical cross-border transportation movements between the United States and Mexico.
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About U.S.-Mexico Border and Binational Health
CDC works with U.S.-Mexico partners to prevent and control disease spread across borders, and protect the health of border residents, binational communities, and other mobile populations.
Citing and Tracking Your Bibliographic References
Use this guide to help you learn how to correctly cite and keep track of the references you find for your research.
Keeping up with Geography journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for all facets of Geography? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's, you can download and read the articles you want from the journals for which we have subscriptions.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's also available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.