Gender and Intimacy Across the U.S-Mexico Borderlands

In recent years, scholars from across a variety of disciplinary fields have initiated studies exploring gender and intimacy across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Some of the most exciting and innovating work has begun to examine how notions of gender as well as masculinity and femininity shape emotional and personal relations with partners, spouses, children, and extended family members and how those relationships, in turn, impact their experiences with migration, community formation, and their interactions with the state, among other topics.

Building on this rich emerging literature, we solicit proposals for papers that explore deeply and widely themes of gender and intimacy as well as sexuality and identity in/on and across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. We define gender and intimacy broadly. While we consider gender as the social and cultural roles assigned to biological males and females that construct them as a multiplicity of feminine and masculine subjects, we treat intimacy as an emotional and personal expression of love and desire as well as affection between two or more people that is performed or enacted across a variety of spaces, places, and relationships, including marriage, courtship, and the family as well as in homosocial relations and contexts. We also treat the U.S.-Mexico borderlands loosely, regarding it as a region of diverse social, political, economic, and cultural interactions, inconsistencies, contradictions, conflicts, and violence, that is bisected by an international boundary separating and joining peoples of different genders, races, ethnicities, classes, and sexual orientations.

Topics of Interest Include

• Courtship, marriage, and migration in the borderlands
• Gender, race, and ethnicity in the borderlands
• Family and community formation in the borderlands
• Sexuality and intimacy in the borderlands
• Sexual violence in the borderlands
• State power and practices regulating gender and intimacy in the borderlands
• Masculinity and manhood in the borderlands
• Queer bodies in the borderlands
• Queer and transgender activists and activism in the borderlands

Goals of the Workshop
Our goals are to bring together scholars of all ranks (including graduate students) who are willing to share their work, provide constructive feedback to fellow presenters, and publish their papers. After the workshop, we plan to invite all participants to submit revised papers for consideration in a Special Issue of the Pacific Historical Review, pending peer and editorial review. Note: The editor of the journal will attend the workshop to see the work in progress.

Logistics of the Workshop & Keynote Speaker
All selected workshop participants will receive complimentary accommodations for one night near the UCSB campus. Transportation between the accommodations and the UCSB campus will also be provided. Dinner the evening before the event as well as a continental breakfast and lunch the day of the event are also included. Transportation costs to UCSB from home institutions are not included.

SCHEDULE

September 30, 2016

• 5:00-5:15 pm: Welcome & Introduction, Sharon Farmer, Chair & Professor, History
• 5:15-6:00 pm: Keynote Speaker, Dr. Alexandra M. Stern, Professor of American Culture, Women’s Studies, History, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan.
• 6:00-8:00 pm: Catered Dinner & Informal Discussion

October 1, 2016

• 8:00-8:45 am: Coffee, Tea, and Light Refreshments
• 8:45-9:00 am: Welcome & Introductions, Miroslava Chávez-Garcia & Verónica Castillo-Muñoz
• 9:00-10:30 am: Session I: Cultural Studies, Media, & Personal Narratives in Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
  • Laura Barraclough, Assistant Professor, American Studies, Yale University, “Charro Masculinity in Motion: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family on Hulu’s Los Cowboys”
  • Juan Llamas-Rodríguez, Ph.D. Student, Film & Media, UCSB, “The Familial Ties of the Female NarcoTrafficker”
  • Jennifer Tyburczy, Assistant Professor, Feminist Studies, UCSB, “Sex Toys After NAFTA: Transnational Class Politics, Erotic Consumerism, and the Economy of Female Pleasure in Mexico City”
  • Deborah Boehm, Associate Professor, Anthropology, UN Reno, “Divided by Citizenship: Mixed-Status Partnerships in the United States and Mexico”
  • Commentators: D. Inés Casillas, Associate Professor, Chicana/o Studies, UCSB, & Leisy Abrego, Associate Professor, Chicana/o Studies, UCLA
  • Audience: Comment
• 10:45 am-12:15 pm: Session II: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Gender, Marriage, and Intimacy in 20^th-Century U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
  • Celeste Menchaca, Ph.D. Candidate, American Studies and Ethnicity, USC, “Staging Crossings: Policing and Performing Difference at the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1906-1917”
  • Marla A. Ramírez, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Sociology and Sexuality Studies, SFSU, “Transnational Gender Formations: A Banished U.S. Citizen Woman Negotiates Motherhood & Marriage Across the U.S.-Mexico Border”
  • Jane Lily López, Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, UCSD, “Together and Apart: Mixed-Citizenship Couples in the Mexican Border Region”
  • Commentators: Denise Segura, Professor, Sociology, UCSB, & Veronica Castillo-Muñoz, Assistant Professor, History, UCSB
  • Audience: Comment
• Lunch Break: 12:15 pm – 1:15 pm
• 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm: Session III: Contesting Gender, Family, and Marriage in the 19^th-Century U.S.-Borderlands
  • Margie Brown-Coronel, Assistant Professor, History, CSU, Fullerton, “History Makers in the Borderlands: Josefa Del Valle and Legacy Building in California, 1880 to 1940”
  • Amy Langford, Ph.D. Candidate, History, American University, “Saints on the Border: Plural Marriage and the Contest for Authority in the Mormon Colonies of Mexico, 1885 to 1915”
  • Erika Pérez, Assistant Professor, History, University of Arizona, “The Zamorano-Daltons and the Unevenness of U.S. Conquest in California: A Borderland Family at the Turn of the 20^th Century”
  • Commentators: James Brooks, Professor, History & Anthropology, UCSB, & Miroslava Chávez-García, Professor, History, UCSB
  • Audience: Comment
• 3:00-3:15 pm: Concluding Remarks & Publishing Timeline
  • Miroslava Chávez-García, Verónica Castillo-Muñoz, & Marc Rodríguez, Editor, Pacific Historical Review
• Dinner: 5:00 – 8:00 pm @ home of Miroslava Chávez-García

Keynote Speaker Biography

Dr. Alexandra Minna Stern, Professor of American Culture, Women’s Studies, History, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan, will provide they keynote talk on “Gender and Intimacy Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.” Author of Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in America, 2d. ed. (UC Press, 2015) and Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America (John Hopkins University Press, 2012) as well as numerous articles on the history of public health in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Professor Stern is a leading voice in unraveling the dynamics of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability, social difference, and reproductive politics in the United States and Latin America.

Hotel Accommodations

Best Western Plus, South Coast Inn
5620 Calle Real
Goleta, California, 93117-2319, US
Phone: 805/967-3200
Fax: 805/683-4466
Toll Free Reservations:
800-350-3614

http://book.bestwestern.com/bestwestern/US/CA/Goleta-hotels/BEST-WESTERN-PLUS-South-Coast-Inn/Hotel-Overview.do?iata=00171880&propertyCode=05521&cm_mmc=BL-_-Google-_-GMB-_-05521

UCSB Campus Maps & Driving Directions

•  http://www.aw.id.ucsb.edu/maps/
• http://www.aw.id.ucsb.edu/maps/images/aw_pdfs/Campus_IV.pdf
• http://admissions.sa.ucsb.edu/visit-ucsb/directions

For more information, please contact Miroslava Chavez-Garcia at mchavezgarcia@chicst.ucsb.edu or (53) 219-3933 or Veronica Castillo-Muñoz at castillomunoz@history.ucsb.edu