Embracing the crossroads that made the region distinctive this book reveals how American families have always been characterized by greater diversity than idealizations of the traditional family have allowed. The essays show how family life figured prominently in relations to larger struggles for conquest and control.
David Wallace Adams is Professor of History at Cleveland State University and author of Education for Extinction. Crista DeLuzio is Associate Professor of History at Southern Methodist University and author of Female Adolescence in American Scientific Thought.
“On the Borders of Love and Power explores the intimate intersections of race, gender, and empire among families in the American West. The editors have gathered provocative essays by the best-known historians of family and gender in the region. This volume captures the breadth and depth of contemporary research in the field and will influence scholars for years to come.”—Albert L. Hurtado, author of Herbert Eugene Bolton: Historian of the American Borderlands
"This important book, full of fine scholarship, explores the history of the American West through intimate and richly rendered portraits of kinship and family relations. Emphasizing the centrality of cross-cultural encounters and the “micro-politics” of family formation within the broader context of colonial “macro-politics” and nation building, these compelling and accessible essays provide a deeply textured understanding of the history of the region. This volume will certainly inspire historians of the Western United States, as well as those of colonialism, empire, and national expansion in other regions, to focus more closely on these intimate realms in their own research."—James F. Brooks, president, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, and author of Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands
366 pp.6 x 9Illus: 19 b/w photographs, 1 map, 1 table
9780520272385$70.00|£59.00Hardcover
Jul 2012