Nature, Culture, and History at the Nation's Edge: Humanities Perspective on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

The roughly 500-mile stretch of borderlands between where the Colorado River drains into the Gulf of California and where the Rio Grande meets Mexico is the site of a unique and fluctuating history. Prof. Hirt and postdoctoral scholar Cody Ferguson have been developing a variety of materials that educate the public on the different physical, cultural, economic, and social environments of this region. They seek to bridge the cultures that have lived in and near and have passed through or back and forth.

With increased public attention surrounding immigration, the construction of a border wall, and the steady stream of news about border-crosser deaths, coyotes, and crime, the border region between the Colorado and the Rio Grande has become an increasingly important place to study the effects of geopolitical boundaries on national and local identities, cross-cultural relations, economic interdependence, transboundary environmental degradation and conservation, and the day-to-day lives of the millions of people who call this region home.

This project was sponsered by the Institute for Humanities Research.