NEW Fall 2024 - On Borderlands and Borders

Instructor: Louis (Dean) Bruno, Academic Dean, Trinity College, History

While traditional North American history is often focused on the creation and maintenance of nation-states, the history of borderlands and borders allows scholars to analyze the various ways that people crossed, shaped, and openly defied boundaries (imaged or otherwise) in pursuit of their own individual and group objectives. This course examines key moments and claims of belonging/community from the height of the Mound Builders to the more modern era.

Major themes will include encounters, exchanges, conflicts, and agency within the broader context of power dynamics and differentials. This course will investigate how competition and control for land, natural resources, and trade goods transformed the physical places and cultural spaces of these regions and the people who called them home.