Both Sides Now

"Both Sides Now: Writing the Edges of the North American West brings together the best scholarship in a focused, synthetic survey of five themes in the history of the northern and southern borderlands: the borderlands as aboriginal homelands and the persistence of Indigenous territories and ways of being; imperial and national efforts to create binary notions of territory and identity; regulatory efforts aimed stopping or limiting the movement of certain people across their borders; the way the cross-border movement of capital, goods, and people, usually aided by state power, weakened those efforts; and the complex, binary-refusing identities that persist in borderlands communities. Historian Sheila McManus uses these themes to highlight the commonalities between the two borderlands' histories and provides an overview and a starting point for experts and newcomers in the field of North American borderlands history to address new questions. By conceptualizing both borders together and focusing particular attention on race and gender as well as empire and nation, Both Sides Now provides a unique methodology in North American scholarship that emphasizes the connections between these borderlands and others around the world"--