Nature and History at the Nation's Edge: A Field Institute in Environmental and Borderlands History

FAIN: EH-50164-08

Arizona Board of Regents (Tucson, AZ 85721-0073)
Katherine G. Morrissey (Project Director: March 2008 to June 2010)

A four-week institute for twenty-five college and university faculty on the cultural and environmental history of Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora, Mexico.

Nature and History at the Nation's Edge is a NEH 2009 Summer Institute that will bring 25 humanities faculty to the University of Arizona. This month-long institute will enable participants to develop a deeper understanding of the interdisciplinary fields of environmental and borderlands history through a distinctive, hands-on seminar that will include travel through the arid lands and historical landscapes of Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora, Mexico. Both in the classroom and in the field, leading scholars will offer participants insights and methods for reading the historical landscape in a variety of rural, urban, and industrial settings, and for thinking about both cultural and environmental history in a broader binational context. The institute will benefit faculty who teach undergraduate courses in fields such as U.S. History, Geography, Latin American Studies, Anthropology, American Studies, and Mexican American Studies and contribute to the advancement of humanities teaching.