People
Geraldo Cadava
U.S.-Mexico Borderlands; Latina/o; Mexican American; United States
Office: Harris Hall #210
Phone: 847-491-3152
E-mail: g-cadava
northwestern.edu
Geraldo Cadava (Ph.D. Yale University, 2008) specializes in United States history, with emphases on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and Latino populations. Originally from Tucson, Arizona, he came to Northwestern after finishing degrees at Yale University and Dartmouth College (B.A., 2000). He teaches courses on Latino History, the United-States Mexico Borderlands, Comparative American Borderlands, the American West, and the United States since the colonial period.
His first book, Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland (Harvard University Press, Fall 2013), is about the shared cultural and commercial ties between Arizona and Sonora that demonstrate how the United States and Mexico continue to shape one another, despite their political and ethnic divisions. From the 1940s forward, a flourishing cross-border traffic developed in the Arizona-Sonora Sunbelt, as the migrations of entrepreneurs, tourists, shoppers, and students maintained a densely connected transnational corridor. Politicians on both sides worked to cultivate a common ground of free enterprise, spurring the growth of manufacturing, ranching, agriculture, and service industries. However, these modernizing forces created conditions that marginalized the very workers who propped up the regional economy, and would eventually lead to the social and economic instability that has troubled the Arizona-Sonora borderland in recent times.
This project has received support from the Ford Foundation; the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation; Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Programs; and a Huggins-Quarles Prize from the Organization of American Historians.
He is beginning a project on Latino Conservatism, and other research interests include the U.S.-Mexico border; memories of the U.S.-Mexico War between 1846 and 1916; and the movement of Mexican and Mexican American artists between Mexico and the United States, from 1920 to 2000.
His writing has appeared in The Journal of American History, The New York Times, The Atlantic, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Arizona Daily Star, and in the publications of the Immigration Policy Center, the National Park Service, and the American Historical Association.
