Decolonizing the U.S.-Mexico Border - Detailseite

The U.S.-Mexico border has been a locus of conflict for nearly two hundred years and the renewed attention on it following Donald Trump’s border wall proposal amid the ongoing ‘refugee crisis’ has been just the most recent example. While border studies has analyzed questions of nation and citizenship, this tutorial aims to reframe discussion of the border by utilizing a decolonial framework. Drawing on epistemologies from Chicana/o/x and Native American Studies, we will reexamine the border as a settler colonial construct. In the process, the class will also grapple with Chicana/o/x claims to indigeneity. After completing the tutorial, students will have the ability to do critical research in border studies and have an intersectional and transdisciplinary understanding of borders. Students will organize a session in groups of two to three people and contribute an encyclopedic entry for a handbook that will be compiled at the end of the semester.

While this semester will focus on decolonization, there will be a second class on the U.S.-Mexico border in the winter semester that will employ a queer framework. Students can choose to attend both or just one of the semesters.
For any questions, you can contact me at: buechlea@hu-berlin.de

This tutorial is directed at students in the humanities and social sciences, including both BA students in their third semester or higher as well as MA students. Students from other disciplines interested in taking the class should contact me before signing up.