The 52nd Annual Conference of the Western History Association will be held in Denver, CO from October 4-7. The conference theme this year is “Boundary Makers and Border Crossers,” so as you can imagine there are plenty of great borderlands panels to attend. Here is a quick rundown of panels relevant to our collective borderlands interests (I put this together quickly and surely missed some – please add them in a comment). The list represents panel titles. Some of these feature entire panels on Borderlands and Transnational history, others are more broadly defined by contain a single paper or two on relevant borderlands topics. Indeed, if you define “borderlands” or transnational history broadly – a great majority of the program features scholarship that examines environmental, cultural, religious, intellectual, social or other types of boundaries and historical divides. For details on presenters and paper titles, see the full program at http://issuu.com/westernhistoryassociation/docs/52nd_wha_2012_denver_program_for_web:
Friday, October 5th
8:30-10:00 AM
- Marking Territory: Representation, Arbitration, and Demarcation on the U.S.-Mexico Border
- Women, Families, and State Politics in the U.S. West and Mexico
10:30-12:00
- Defining and Bounding Environmental Regions in the West
- Laboring for Progress, Migrating for Work
- Indigenous-Defined Borderlands, Boundaries and Landscapes: a Panel
4:00-5:30
- Boundary Markets and Border Crossers: Histories of Immigration in the American West
Saturday, October 6th
8:30-10:00
- Making Meaning out of Place in the Twentieth Century
- Everyday Hierarchies: Gender and Culture in Public Arenas
- Indians on the Road: How to Teach, Research, and Publish Borderlands, Identity, and Transnational Histories
- Indigenous Defined Borderlands, Boundaries and Landscapes: a Roundtable
10:30-12:00
- Race and Violence in the Early Twentieth-Century West
2:30-4:00
- Interior Borderlands: The Contested Legal, Cultural, and Racial Spaces of Early Twentieth-Century Indian Reservations
- New Chicana/o and Latino History: Beyond U.S.-Mexican Borderlands
Sunday, October 7th
8:30-10:00
- The Frontier Goes Global: The Wild West in Europe
- Violence and Identity in the Mexican Borderlands
Borderlands History 
I didn’t want to self-publicize in the post, but see no harm in doing so in a comment. I am chairing 2 sessions, a paper panel and a roundtable – both entitled “Indigenous-Defined Borderlands, Boundaries and Landscapes.” They will feature the (no-doubt) impressive scholarship of Jeffrey Shepherd, Taylor Spence, Natale Zappia, Jeff Schulze, Cynthia Radding, James Brooks, Joshua Reid and Ted Binnema. I hope to see you all there!
Following Brenden’s lead, I just wanted to note that I’ll be stepping in for José Alamillo to chair the panel, “New Chicana/o and Latino History: Beyond the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.” We’ve got four really great papers on migrant labor and social justice issues outside of what might be considered “typical” Southwest/borderlands settings. I hope to see some/all of you at our session, as well!
Brenden, thank you for the run-down. Looks like a lot of excellent material. And thanks for the heads up, Tim!
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