This course will explore and allow for discussion of key themes in Mexican American and Mexican immigrant history in the modern United States. The course will cover diverse geographies and time periods, from the northern borderlands of colonial New Spain to postwar California to contemporary New Haven and rural Vermont. Alongside ranging geographies and temporalities, the course will also pay specific attention to various communities who have historically -- whether proudly, ambiguously, or reluctantly -- been part of the peoples we now call Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. It will serve as a critical exploration of the intertwined histories of both Mexican American and Mexican immigrant communities in the United States -- of where, how, and why they have historically intersected, collaborated, and stood in solidarity with one another alongside when they have been at odds with each other throughout U.S. history. An emphasis will be placed on interdisciplinary historical approaches to Mexican American and Mexican migrant histories. Students will be exposed to the approaches of cultural, social, political, gender, oral, labour, and legal historians alongside various interdisciplinary Ethnic Studies scholars. |