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This course asks how territorial boundaries have evolved into a dispersed, interior regime of surveillance and control over the course of American history. Beginning with colonial-era treaties and other practices of boundary-making in early US history, we will turn to examine U.S.–Mexico borderlands as a region shaped not only by movement, exchange, and cultural intermingling, but also by the evolving power of the state and the contested processes of border?making. Special emphasis will be given to the intertwined histories of Indigenous, Mexican, Black, Chinese, and Euro?American communities and to examining how borders are produced, negotiated, and lived, while developing critical reading and writing skills in history.