Rethinking the Wall: A Social History of the U.S. Border Wall
Thursday, April 18, 2019 - 4:10pm
Linderman Library, Room 200
Rethinking the Wall: A Social History of the U.S. Border Wall
Olivia Mena
Postdoctoral Research Associate, African American Studies, Princeton University
Faculty Affiliate of African and American Diaspora Studies, University of Texas, Austin
Today the national border wall is the highest symbol of American identity, freedom, and security, and also one of the greatest symbols of exclusion. This lecture uncovers how walls and fences were the founding infrastructure of United States that oriented and consolidated emergent ideas of race, racial hierarchies, and labor in the landscape. This social history confronts and contextualizes the current rallying cry to “Build that Wall!” in the United States and in the world.
Dr. Olivia Mena is a postdoctoral research associate in the African American StudiesDepartment at Princeton University, and a faculty affiliate of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a postcolonial studies scholar who does interdisciplinary research on race and ethnicity in a global context. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the London School of Economics.
