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A two-week institute for twenty-five secondary schoolteachers, to be held at University of Texas-El Paso, that would examine historical and literary narratives of the Chihuahuan Desert people.

The 2017 NEH Summer Seminar for Teachers will provide 16 secondary school teachers in grades 6–12 with two weeks of intense, guided exploration of borderland narratives from the Chihuahuan Desert—a culturally and politically significant region for instructional consideration and critical research encompassing 139,000 square miles across several Mexican states and parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Building on the ethnohistorical work and narratology, we argue that the Chihuahuan Desert’s wide geographic space serves as a useful metaphor in conceptualizing the historical and cultural evolution of border identities, which are the product of space adaptations and bi-national influences. To that end, the Seminar will largely, but not exclusively, focus on the El Paso–Cd Juárez metroplex. The Seminar will provide teachers with a focused understanding of the dynamic nature and literacies of border people’s narratives and of their social, cultural, and political adaptations across time.