Urban Humanities in the Borderlands: Engaged Scholarship from Mexico City to Los Angeles

Year
2015

The Pacific Rim is a geographic construct that offers an imaginary shore of continental connections. From the perspective of Los Angeles, it suggests affinities to the south and to the west, productively shifting traditional scholarly apparatus away from Europe toward Latin America and Asia. Our massive sister cities include Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul, but none is so familiar as Mexico City. Our nations share contested borders, histories, migrations, economies, architectures, and cultures. Perhaps it is most illuminating to consider Los Angeles and Mexico City as neither same nor different, but as intimately interconnected in particular ways. —UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative

Edited by Jonathan Crisman.