UTSA’S new school to study borderlands
To some, it won’t sound at all new that the University of Texas at San Antonio is launching a new school, a new academic practice, a new field of multidisciplinary undergraduate study focused on the borderlands.
It seems obvious that such work at such a university in a city like ours might have been brought to bear a century ago.
Consider that this was Mexico. The U.s.-mexico border was forged by the United States not so long ago — and that geographic divide continues to affect us.
But in the world of academia, deeply shaped by Western influences, it’s more likely to teach Greek civilization than Mesoamerican societies, whose histories have long been suppressed.
This kind of north-south reorientation is new and revolutionary. It’s also academic leadership at its best.
The creation of the new Borderland Studies school within the College of Liberal and Fine Arts arrives as the U.s.-mexico border becomes increasingly militarized and more volatile — as are other contested borders around the world.
The school, expected to launch with one or two classes this fall, ultimately promises to bridge academic study in various fields, including history, political science, economics, anthropology, archaeology, the arts, even genetics and virtual reality, to better study the borderlands.
Together, they can help reimagine what borders can and will be in the future.
Students will still learn the east-west origin stories dating to the pilgrims and ancient European civilizations. But they’ll also learn about the missing origin stories of this continent to include all the Americas.
John Phillip Santos, professor of borderland humanities and creative nonfiction at UTSA, is part of the team.
He’s a San Antonio-born scholar, writer and documentary filmmaker. He was the first Mexican American, first Latino, first Latinx Rhodes scholar.
He also authored two memoirs, and his “Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation” was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has long traveled in and studied Mexico.
And he’s ready for your questions. “A borderland humanities practice doesn’t reject a Western humanities legacy. We’ve all mustered through that.
“But a borderlands humanities practice means a connection to and a recognition of the north-south nature of our world here.
“In San Antonio, in this community, in a setting in the borderlands, there is another American origin story, an origin story that comes from the south. It isn’t east-west but north-south, and it’s one that has a very special focus on migration.
“It will humanize the sense of conflict and discord,” Santos said. “Scholarship has a role to play in that.”
The field will help us understand where we are today.
“If we were taught anything about migration or mestizaje, it was a sidebar to the great founding of the American Republic,” the scholar said. “And it turns out we have this other version of the American origin story coming from Tenochtitlán,” the capital of the Aztec empire now known as Mexico City.
“It’s a different kind of historical scholarship,” he said, that includes the Spanish colonial era, indigenous pre-history, codex literature and “what’s happening right now in Mexican archaeology,” often described as being in a golden age.
Santos called it a new way of understanding “where we are in this great epic.”
While various professors at UTSA are teaching and researching strands within this legacy, a specific borderlands practice will connect these strands and grow the school.
“We’re dominated by discussions of the border, informed by national security, or economics, or poisoning the blood. But what we’re missing is the way that artists, writers, designers, architects are engaging these same issues through a very different humanities-based practice.”
The initiative began as a discussion in 2022. Some imagined a five-year project.
But a year and a half into it, the school’s beginnings were being willed into existence, propelled by excitement among scholars.
Alongside coursework, the new school will re-create “study abroad” that will take students to Mexico and beyond.
The school also will develop public programs, including guest speakers, film screenings, seminars and performances at its newest downtown hub, the former Southwest School of Art.
Altogether, Santos says the new school will explore “the missing testimonio of how we think about the borderlands today.”
San Antonians will be the first to experience it, and we’ve already seen how much of an effect such relearning can have.
Santos points to “Refusing to Forget,” the Texas-based academic project that’s rewriting the whitewashed story of Texas state-sanctioned violence against its residents of Mexican descent. That exhibit remains at Our Lady of the Lake University through March.
Such histories will affect students of San Antonio and South Texas, as can trips to the Templo Mayor in Mexico City and Teotihuacan just outside the capital.
They’re eye-opening pilgrimages that will change your outlook on what we’ve been taught.
They’re also emotional moments, what Harvard scholar David Carrasco calls “your Aztec moment,” when a larger history comes into focus.
It’s learning at its best, and it’s what UTSA promises for generations of students to come.