54 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICANISTS
“BUILDING DIALOGUES IN THE AMERICAS”
Vienna, Austria, July 15 – 20, 2012

Thematic Area: History

Symposium 594 “Transnational Mexico: Dialogues the Bound Mexico to the
Americas and Beyond”
Convenors: Dr. Andrae M Marak, Department of History and Political Science,
California University of PA; marak@calu.edu

Abstract:
This panel proposes to examine Mexico in a transnational perspective,
illuminating the ways in which Mexico often stood (and stands) at the center
of complex interconnected webs.  We argue that history has too often been
approached from the point of view of nation-states.  The result is that
political boundaries, which had long been nebulous, liminal spaces of
contestation and that have only recently hardened, tend to delimit the field
of study.  As Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron note, it was only in the
nineteenth century that nation-states were able to turn borderlands into
political borders that divided people by nationality and ethnicity (among
other categories).  Even then borders were often as much an illusion as a
reality.  In that frame of mind, we hope that our panels will provide new
approaches and new materials that serve to integrate Mexico and its history
into its larger context.  At the same time, by focusing on
transnationality – geographical and metaphorical – we hope to expand the
study of Mexico as site of political debate and discourse, a place of global
commerce, and a location of networks of the left and of crime organizations.

Call for papers will be open from 15 April 2011 until 31 August 2011.

Paper proposals must be sent using the online submission form which will
be available on the Congress website.

More information: http://ica2012.univie.ac.at/home/=