Associate Professor of History
Email: Eric.Meeks@nau.edu
Office Phone: (928) 523-8428
Office BS 209
Research and Teaching Interests
Most of my research and teaching focuses on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, race and ethnicity in North America, Chicana/o history, and American Indian history. My first book, Border Citizens, examines how ethno-racial categories and identities such as Indian, Mexican, and Anglo crystallized in Arizona's borderlands between 1880 and 1980. I examine how the identity formation of the regions’ indigenous groups (expecially Yaquis, Pimas, and Tohono O’odham), Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, and European and Anglo-Americans intersected as the region was politically and economically incorporated into the U.S. nation-state. More generally, my research examines the intersections of race, class, identity, and nation by exploring how various groups and individuals have struggled to define their place as workers and citizens.
List of Courses Taught
Undergraduate courses:
HIS 200: Introduction to History
HIS 291: U.S. History to 1865
HIS 292: U.S. History since 1865
HIS 381: The U.S.-Mexican Borderlands
HIS 396: Chicana/o History
HIS 496: Race and Ethnicity in the United States
HIS 498c: Senior Capstone Course: Research on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands
Graduate courses:
HIS 565: Readings on Race and Ethnicity in the United States
HIS 565: Readings on Race, Nation, and Citizenship in the U.S. and the World
HIS 592: Readings on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands
HIS 692: Research on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands
Publications
Book:
Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007)
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/meebor.html
Journal Articles:
“Protecting the White Citizen Worker: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in
South-Central Arizona, 1929-1945,” Journal of the Southwest 48, 1 (spring
2006): 91-113.
“The Tohono O’odham, Wage Labor, and Resistant Adaptation, 1900-1930,”
Western Historical Quarterly 34, 4 (winter 2003): 468-489.
“Cross-Ethnic Political Mobilization and Yaqui Identity Formation in
Guadalupe, Arizona,” Reflexiones: New Directions in Mexican American
Studies, 1997, ed. Neil Foley (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press,
1998): 77-108.
Book and Documentary Film Reviews in Academic Journals:
Book Review of Working the Navajo Way: Labor and Culture in the Twentieth Century, by Colleen O’Neil, in The Journal of Arizona History 48, 2 (summer 2007): 215-216.
Book Review of Native Pathways: American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the Twentieth Century, eds. Brian Hosmer and Colleen O’Neill, in The Western Historical Quarterly 38, 1 (spring 2007): 71-72.
Book Review of Culture of Empire: American Writers, Mexico, and Mexican
Immigrants, 1880-1930, by Gilbert González, in The Pacific Historical
Review 75, 3 (August 2006): 512-514.
Film Review of “La Raza Unida,” directed by Jesus Salvador Trevino, in The
Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History 62, 4 (July
2006): 195.
Book Review of Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
History, ed. Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, in The Americas: A Quarterly
Review of Inter-American Cultural History 62, 3 (January 2006): 472-473.
Book Review of American Indians in U.S. History, by Roger L. Nichols, in
The Journal of Arizona History 46, 2 (summer 2005): 189-191.
Book Review of Borderman: Memoirs of Federico Jose Maria Ronstadt, by
Edward F. Ronstadt in The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American
Cultural History 61, 2 (October 2004): 304-305.