HIST 314 - Nature Knows No Borders: Environmental History of the U.S. - Mexico Borderlands

The United States and Mexico are “neighbors by nature,” inescapably linked by environmental factors such as pollution, water resources, and human and wildlife migration. Although the international boundary line is itself an artificial construct, since its demarcation in the nineteenth century and especially through its ongoing fortification, the border has had an outsized impact on the ecosystems and human communities it transects. The international boundary has increasingly become a site of intensive policing and environmental control, yet people and nature have long managed to evade state and corporate power on both sides of the line. In this course, we will explore the dynamic and contested social and natural landscapes of northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest from pre-contact to the early twenty-first century, focusing on political, social, and environmental change after the U.S. - Mexico War (1846 - 1848). We will examine how the natural landscape has shaped cooperation and conflict in the border region through thematic case studies of issues such as parklands and conservation, boundary disputes, extraction, citizenship, and migration. The course will take a transnational and decolonial approach to understanding the history of the region, introducing students to distinct environmental historiographies the U.S. West and Mexico. By the end of the course, students will have a nuanced understanding of the historical roots of contemporary environmental and social issues in the U.S. - Mexico border region.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Not offered: 2026-27
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.