C J Alvarez
I am an associate professor in the department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies. Before I received my doctorate in history at the University of Chicago, I studied the history of art and architecture at Harvard University and art and art history at Stanford University. I write and teach about the history of the U.S.-Mexico border and environmental history.
My first book, Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the U.S.-Mexico Divide (University of Texas Press, 2019) is a history of the built world of the U.S.-Mexico borderline. Based on dozens of rare and never-before-seen historic maps, photographs, and blueprints, as well as archival documents and oral histories, I explain how and why the history of survey markers, surveillance infrastructure, and fencing is connected to the history of river engineering, damming, and other hydraulic projects.
This book won the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s Abbott Lowell Cummings Award in 2020, given annually to the newly-published book that has made the most significant contribution to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes of North America. It also won the Society of Architectural Historians' Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Award in 2021, given annually to the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of landscape architecture or garden design.
Research Interests
history of the U.S.-Mexico border; environmental history
Source: The University of Texas at Austin - Department of Mexican America and Latina/o Studies
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