³ÉÈËÍ·Ìõ

Professor of History

My research interests have included twentieth century Mexico, with special attention to the Mexican Revolution and political culture, and the somewhat deeper environmental history of the Borderlands. My publications include a biography of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, Emiliano Zapata!: Revolution and Betrayal in Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 1995), a co-edited volume (with Ben Fallaw), entitled Heroes and Hero Cults in Latin America (University of Texas Press, 2006), and a book on memories of Zapata and their political uses throughout the twentieth century, The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata: Myth, Memory, and Mexico’s Twentieth Century (University of Texas Press, 2008).  The last of these was translated as La trayectoria póstuma de Emiliano Zapata: Mito y memoria en el México del siglo XX (Grano de Sal, 2019).  I have also published articles in such journals as the Hispanic American Historical Review and the American Historical Review. 

My current project, tentatively entitled “Conquering Cacti: War, Boundary Marking, and Botany in the Deserts of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” uses the “discovery” and naming of cacti to explore the meeting of Mexico and the United States in the deserts of the borderlands (with a focus on the Chihuahuan desert) and the efforts from both south and north to occupy, control, and understand that terrain. 

I’ve received a Fulbright grant for research in Mexico, a Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Nebraska, and an Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award from ³ÉÈËÍ·Ìõ’s College of Liberal Arts.  I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on modern Mexico, Latin America more broadly, Environmental History, and the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands, as well as U.S. and World History surveys.  With my ³ÉÈËÍ·Ìõ colleagues Ignacio Martinez and Leslie Waters, I am co-editor of a new book series, Global Borderlands, at Texas Tech University Press. 

I’ve supervised doctoral dissertations on such diverse topics as the management and manipulation of the Rio Grande, Mexican food in El Paso, borderlands air pollution and efforts to address it, women and borderlands vice, Mexican road building, the Zapatistas, and Mexico’s border with Guatemala.  I am especially interested in working with PhD and MA students who are interested in modern Mexico, the deeper environmental history of both Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and the history of borderlands and other zones of contact within Latin America and in other world regions.

Curriculum vitae

Contact Info: 

Liberal Arts 328
sbrunk@utep.edu
(915) 747-7059