Professional Research Interests


  Landscapes; Urban and Regional Cultural Geography;

  Mexican-American Borderlands

 

For almost two decades, two principal research agendas have held my attention: the urban geography of northern Mexico and the cultural geography of Mexican Americans.  Two research monographs and an edited volume published by university presses, and a steady output of refereed articles in top geography and cognate field journals are the result.  This research has largely been conducted independently, and without major external funding.  I have been awarded several small grants that have supported fieldwork for this research, including two awards from the Association of American Geographers in 1986 and 1990.  Tejano South Texas was awarded the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize in 2003 by the Association of American Geographers.

My concerns with urban Mexico stem from my doctoral dissertation research in Veracruz.  That research questioned the problem of the perception of selected cities in the nineteenth century and how the foreign images of these places influenced their growth and role in the development of early modern Mexico.  In 1987, this concern with the geographical image of cities was carried forward to an examination of the towns of the north Mexican border.  Five years of collaborative research and field work across and throughout the 2000 mile-long Mexico-U.S. boundary resulted in The Mexican Border Cities: Landscape Anatomy and Place Personality (1993).  In this book it is contended that, despite their proximity to the United States, the border cities are fundamentally Mexican places, as distinguished by their urban landscapes, including town plan, land-use pattern, and building fabric.  The book contributes to the argument made by geographers and others that cities are not only economic systems, but are equally cultural creations and need to be understood as such.  I continue to work in this arena, carrying out field studies of cultural patterns and processes along the border.

A complementary research effort to the study of urban Mexico is my work on Mexican Americans.  A stream of research articles as well as several book chapters and solicited contributions examine aspects of Mexican American place identity, origins, and geographical pattern.  This array of research is showcased in Tejano South Texas: A Mexican American Cultural Province (2002), a monograph-length exploration of how and why South Texas represents a distinctive cultural subregion along the Mexican-American borderland.  The work contributes to separate, yet related theoretical issues that have concerned American cultural and regional geographers.  First, it supports the contention made by geographers that particular American ethnic and social groups have created distinctive areas and that these subregions can be measured, delimited and illustrated geographically. This research is of considerable interest to borderland historians and others who have called for research to substantiate Mexican American regional variation.  Further, Tejano South Texas demonstrates how landscape is a socially constructed space that both mirrors and reinforces group identity. In this research an emphasis is given to understanding cultural forms and attributes as they persist or change in a landscape over time. In Tejano South Texas, I combine the more traditional cultural geographic concern of regional interpretation with an analysis of landscape as a symbolic representation.

My present research is concerned with the geographical distribution and social-cultural identity of Hispanic/Latino populations in the United States. Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places, an edited volume forthcoming from the University of Texas Press is an exploration of the regional cultural geography of Hispanic/Latino Americans.  In its broadest scope, the book represents a scholarly assessment of ethnic group diversity examined across geographic scales from nation, to region, to place. Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places addresses themes of spatial distribution and cultural identity specific to each subgroup and relevant to the places that Hispanic/Latino Americans have created.  Issues of contested space, social networks, and landscape imprint reveal identity and explore how spaces have become places charged with meaning to specific Hispanic/Latino subgroups.  These themes are examined across varied social contexts where some Latinos are only just beginning to create a place identity as new immigrants and in others where Hispanics have deeply etched landscapes that communicate long attachment to places.

In spring 2004 I will initiate “Mexican Border City Landscape Change: An Analysis Using Re-Photography.” This project documents and investigates historic built environments along the U.S.-Mexico border. Research will create a visual analysis of selected built environments of two cities, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Reynosa, Tamaulipas, between 1900 and the present. A major data source is my personal archive of historical photographic images, chiefly vintage historic postcards, including some 1000 images for Juárez and some 300 images for Reynosa. The methods of research will involve case study method, comparative method, and repeat photography to analyze past and present images of the built environment. The changing landscapes studied will be mapped to create a resource for historic preservationists. The research will illustrate how geographers can reconstruct and interpret past built environments from historic and contemporary visual materials.

Mexican border cities are some of the fastest growing urban places in the world. Rapid growth has meant accelerated change in the urban landscapes of these places. Historic built environments in these cities are poorly understood, and the proposed research will create a model method for assessing landscape change in urban areas undergoing fundamental physical transformation. The results of this research can be applied to other urban contexts in the developing world where landscape change is erasing past built environments.