"For Sale Along the Border: Histories of Consumer Capitalism and Culture in the American Southwest and Mexican North"

Proposals for scholarly papers concerning consumer capitalism and culture in the United States-Mexico borderlands are solicited for a symposium sponsored by the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. A workshop for participants will be held in Taos, New Mexico, in early September 2005, which will be followed in April 2006 by a conference open to the public at SMU in Dallas, Texas. Ultimately a university press will publish the papers as a volume.

The goal of the symposium is to bring the borderlands, the American Southwest, and the Mexican North into the literature – and into the historical narrative itself – of consumer capitalism and culture. Scholars who propose new ways of thinking about consumer capitalism and culture based on evidence from the borderlands are especially encouraged to submit proposals. The papers can be situated in any time frame from the colonial period through the age of NAFTA, on either side of the border or on the border itself.

A symposium committee consisting of several members of the Clements Center, chaired by Alexis McCrossen, Associate Professor of History, SMU, amccross@smu.edu, will select six to eight scholars to participate in the symposium. The Clements Center will provide the participants with airfare, ground transportation, lodging, and meals for both the Taos and Dallas meetings. If interested, please direct a 500-word proposal and curriculum vita by October 15, 2004 to the address below.