Throughout the 19th century, and continuing into the 20th, frontiers and borderlands have represented imaginative spaces charged with both problems and possibility in the Americas. Our capstone will consider the different ways such borderland stories, which frequently revolve around conflict, have shaped national, international, indigenous, and multi-national allegiances and ways of imagining community. Paradoxical mirages, frontiers have represented both the dream of a classless society and the possibility of new forms of capital accumulation; the proving ground for Anglo-masculinity and spaces marked by chicano and chicana resistance and emergent subjectivities; a contact zone facilitating cross-cultural exchange and a zone marked by racial violence. Rather than trying to resolve these apparently contradictory framings, our seminar will examine the shifting ways borderland representations have shaped, and continue to shape, community in the Americas. To this end we will take up a number of cultural forms: history, social theory, short stories, novels and film.

As an advanced seminar, your grade will largely be based on active and committed engagement to both our materials and our critical conversations.

Authors will likely include (but are not limited to): George Lippard, Americo Paredes, Gloria Anzaldua, Thomas King, Helena María Viramontes, William Gibson

Relevant scholars will likely include (but are not limited to): Philip Deloria, José David Saldívar, Richard Slotkin, Richard White, Amy Kaplan, Shelley Streeby, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn