Marcel Garcia
Broadly, my focus is on transnational economic patterns and shifting demographics of social and cultural relationships that characterize the experience of disparate groups in the U.S. – Mexico Borderlands throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century.
My work acknowledges the transnational nature of the field of border studies on not just Americans and Mexicans, but also Native American groups, as well as distinct European immigrants, while underscoring the complexity of interdisciplinary approaches to ethnic, racial, religious, gender, environmental and national studies. I examine how peoples were actively involved in the often-contradictory relationships that arose as they lived, worked and survived on the Borderlands.
Borderlands history, as a field, is the history of conflict, cooperation and contradiction of highly racialized communities. As such, my questions challenge conventional narratives of assimilation and integration with more complicated but flexible understandings of borderland experiences that are not bounded by the current territorial delineations of the nation-state. This transnational scope complicates nationally bounded histories and acknowledges the shifting struggle of various peoples.
A native of Los Angeles, I received my B.A. in History from UCLA. After graduating I lived, worked and studied for nearly two years in Taipei, Taiwan, then for four years in Santiago, Chile. More recently, I earned my MA in History from UCSC with a thesis entitled, “Chinese Migrations in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: 1895-1930.”
Here at Yale, my work explores California in the nineteenth century.
